Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit — Joel Chandler Harris

Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) was an American journalist, born in Eatonton, Georgia, who wrote the Uncle Remus stories, including: Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1880), Nights with Uncle Remus (1881/1882), Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), and Uncle Remus and the Little Boy (1905). The stories, based on the African-American oral storytelling tradition, were revolutionary in their use of dialect. They featured a trickster hero called Br'er (Brother) Rabbit, who used his wits against adversity, though his efforts did not always succeed. Harris began publishing his stories in the Atlanta Constitution in 1879 at a time of great interest in the South and in freedmen. They became popular among both black and white readers in the North and South, not least because they presented an idealized view of race relations soon after the Civil War. Apart from Uncle Remus, Harris wrote several other collections of stories depicting rural life in Georgia, including Mingo and Other Sketches in Black and White (1884), Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches (1887) and Stories of Georgia (1896).