The George Routledge and Sons, London, English edition shows an 1884 date, although Routledge probably released its printing simultaneously with Osgood’s. Routledge published multiple runs of Nights until at least 1905. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, became the primary American publisher of Nights from the 1880s until 1971, when this publisher ran its final printing under the Singing Tree Press imprint—the last known edition of the book until our Penguin Classics edition. Ticknor (Boston), Chatto and Windus (London), and McKinlay, Stone & MacKenzie (New York), among other houses, also published reprinted editions over the decades.
In 1895, Harris released a handsome new and revised edition of Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, illustrated by the noted artist Arthur Burdette Frost. Harris published only one authorized edition of Nights, however, illustrated by Frederick Stuart Church (along with James H. Moser, one of the two illustrators for the 1880 Uncle Remus) and William Holbrook Beard. During his lifetime, Harris published seven volumes of Uncle Remus tales; three smaller collections would appear posthumously. In 1955, Richard Chase conveniently gathered all 185 of Harris’s folktales in The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus , also published by Houghton Mifflin.
Among scores of modern retellings and adaptations of Harris’s animal tales, the most widely discussed is Julius Lester’s Tales of Uncle Remus, four volumes of contemporary black-dialect stories richly illustrated with pencil drawings, charcoals, and watercolors by Jerry Pinkney (1987, 1988, 1990, and 1994). Van Dyke Parks and Malcolm Jones wrote three charming volumes of adaptations in their Jump! series, featuring Barry Moser’s playfully anachronistic drawings and watercolors of Brer Rabbit and the other creatures dressed in early-twentieth-century attire (1986, 1987, and 1989).
The primary repository of Harris’s books, correspondence, and manuscripts is Emory University’s Joel Chandler Harris Collection, Atlanta. The Paxton H. Briley Joel Chandler Harris Collection at Florida State University, Tallahassee, is the second largest public collection of Harris books, magazine publications, biographies, and critical studies. Harris’s home, The Wren’s Nest, in West End Atlanta, is a fully restored Queen Anne Victorian House Museum, open to the public.
NIGHTS WITH UNCLE REMUS
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
OF
THE OLD PLANTATION
BY
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
Author of “Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings,” “At Teague Poteets,” etc.
With Illustrations.
BOSTON
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY
1883
Introduction
The volume1 containing an installment of thirty-four negro legends, which was given to the public three years ago, was accompanied by an apology for both the matter and the manner. Perhaps such an apology is more necessary now than it was then; but the warm reception given to the book on all sides—by literary critics, as well as by ethnologists and students of folk-lore, in this country and in Europe—has led the author to believe that a volume embodying everything, or nearly everything, of importance in the oral literature of the negroes of the Southern States, would be as heartily welcomed.
The thirty-four legends in the first volume were merely selections from the large body of plantation folk-lore familiar to the author from his childhood, and these selections were made less with an eye to their ethnological importance than with a view to presenting certain quaint and curious race characteristics, of which the world at large had had either vague or greatly exaggerated notions.
The first book, therefore, must be the excuse and apology for the present volume. Indeed, the first book made the second a necessity; for, immediately upon its appearance, letters and correspondence began to pour in upon the author from all parts of the South. Much of this correspondence was very valuable, for it embodied legends that had escaped the author’s memory, and contained hints and suggestions that led to some very interesting discoveries. The result is, that the present volume is about as complete as it could be made under the circumstances, though there is no doubt of the existence of legends and myths, especially upon the rice plantations, and Sea Islands of the Georgia and Carolina sea-coast, which, owing to the difficulties that stand in the way of those who attempt to gather them, are not included in this collection.
It is safe to say, however, that the best and most characteristic of the legends current on the rice plantations and Sea Islands, are also current on the cotton plantations. Indeed, this has been abundantly verified in the correspondence of those who kindly consented to aid the author in his efforts to secure stories told by the negroes on the sea-coast. The great majority of legends and stories collected and forwarded by these generous collaborators had already been collected among the negroes on the cotton plantations and uplands of Georgia and other Southern States. This will account for the comparatively meagre contribution which Daddy Jack, the old African of the rice plantations, makes towards the entertainment of the little boy.
The difficulty of verifying the legends, which came to hand from various sources, has been almost as great as the attempt to procure them at first hands. It is a difficulty hard to describe. It is sometimes amusing, and sometimes irritating, but finally comes to be recognized as the result of a very serious and impressive combination of negro characteristics. The late Professor Charles F. Hartt, of Cornell University, in his admirable monograph2 on the folk-lore of the Amazon regions of Brazil, found the same difficulty among the Amazonian Indians. Exploring the Amazonian valley, Professor Hartt discovered that a great body of myths and legends had its existence among the Indians of that region. Being aware of the great value of these myths, he set himself to work to collect them; but for a long time he found the task an impossible one, for the whites were unacquainted with the Indian folk-lore, and neither by coaxing nor by offers of money could an Indian be persuaded to relate a myth. In most instances, Professor Hartt was met with statements to the effect that some old woman of the neighborhood was the story-teller, who could make him laugh with tales of the animals; but he never could find this old woman.
But one night, Professor Hartt heard his Indian steersman telling the Indian boatmen a story in order to keep them awake. This Indian steersman was full of these stories, but, for a long time, Professor Hartt found it impossible to coax this steersman to tell him another. He discovered that the Indian myth is always related without mental effort, simply to pass the time away, and that all the surroundings must be congenial and familiar.
In the introduction to the first volume of “Uncle Remus”3 occurs this statement: “Curiously enough, I have found few negroes who will acknowledge to a stranger that they know anything of these legends; and yet to relate one is the surest road to their confidence and esteem.”
This statement was scarcely emphatic enough. The thirty-four legends in the first volume were comparatively easy to verify, for the reason that they were the most popular among the negroes, and were easily remembered.
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