Our author was born in Eatonton, a little village in Georgia, December 9, 1848, in very humble circumstances. He was remarkably impressed, while still very young, with the “Vicar of Wakefield,” and he straightway began to compose little tales of his own.
In 1862 he went to the office of the “Countryman,” a rural weekly paper in Georgia, to learn typesetting. It was edited and published on a large plantation, and the negroes of this and the adjoining plantations furnished him with the material out of which the “Uncle Remus” stories came.
While learning to set type the young apprentice occasionally tried his hand at composing, and not infrequently he slipped into the “Countryman” a little article, composed and printed, without ever having been put in manuscript form.
The publication of an article on the folk-lore of the negroes in “Lippincott’s Magazine” was the beginning of his literary career, and the interest this awakened stimulated him to develop these curious animal stories.
Many of the stories were first printed as articles in the Atlanta “Constitution,” and it was soon seen by students of myth-literature that these stories were very significant and important in their bearing on general mythology.
For the child they have a charm and an interest as “good stories,” and they are told with rare skill and power, but for the student of ethnology they have special value as throwing some light on the probable relation of the negroes with other races which tell similar folk-tales.
Mr. Harris has studied and pursued the profession of law, though he has now for many years been one of the editors of the Atlanta “Constitution,” for which many of his contributions have been originally written.
He is also a frequent contributor both of prose and poetry to current literature, and he is the author of the following books: “Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings; the Folk-lore of the Old Plantation” (New York, 1880), “Nights With Uncle Remus” (Boston, 1883), “Mingo and Other Sketches” (1883).
MR. RABBIT, MR. FOX, AND MR. BUZZARD.[¹]