Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v2.djvu/366

 350 Dialect Writers In the march through Georgia, General Sherman's army devastated the Turner plantation, and The Countryman was of course discontinued. After various experiences with differ- ent newspapers Harris joined the staff of The Atlanta Constitu- tion in 1876. At this time he was known chiefly as an essayist and poet, but he began almost immediately to pubUsh some of the plantation legends that he had heard from the lips of the negroes before and during the war. The first volume of these stories, Uncle Remus: his Songs and his Sayings, the Folk- Lore of the Old Plantation, was published in 1880. It contained thirty-four plantation legends or negro folk-tales, a few planta- tion proverbs, nine negro songs, a story of the war, and twenty- one sayings or opinions of Uncle Remus, all supposed to be sung or narrated by Uncle Remus himself. In 1883 appeared Nights with Uncle Remus: Myths and Legends of the Old Planta- tion. This contained sixty-nine new legends and was prefaced by an interesting Introduction. Among the new legends were a few told by Daddy Jack, a representative of the dialect spoken on the coastal rice plantations of South CaroUna and Georgia. These two volumes represent the author's best work in the domain of negro dialect and folk-lore, and were accorded instant recognition as opening a new and deeply interesting field both to Hterature and ethnology. Among the later works that continue the Uncle Remus tradition may be mentioned Uncle Remus and his Friends (1892), Mr. Rabbit at Home (1895), The Tar-Baby Story and Other Rhymes of Uncle Remus (1904), Told by Uncle Remus (1905), Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit ( 1 907), and Uncle Remus and the Little Boy ( 1 9 1 0). There were also numerous stories of the War and of the Reconstruction period. A year before his death Harris founded Uncle Remus's Magazine, which survived him only a few years. Immediately after his death in 1908 the Uncle Remus Memorial Association was formed, the purpose of which was to purchase the home of the writer of the Uncle Remus stories, near Atlanta, and to convert it into a suitable memorial. This has now been done. The significance of Uncle Remus as a study in negro character can best be understood by a comparison of Harris's work with that of others, especially his predecessors, in the same field. The negroes themselves, by the way, can show an