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Introduction

Joel Chandler Harris (December 9, 1845 – July 3, 1908) was an American journalist, fiction writer, and folklorist best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories. Harris was born in Eatonton, Georgia, where he served as an apprentice on a plantation during his teenage years. He spent the majority of his adult life in Atlanta working as an associate editor at the Atlanta Constitution.

Harris led two significant professional lives. As editor and journalist Joe Harris, he ushered in the New South alongside Henry W. Grady, stressing regional and racial reconciliation during and after the Reconstruction era. As Joel Chandler Harris, fiction writer and folklorist, he recorded many Brer Rabbit stories from the African-American oral tradition and helped to revolutionize children's literature in the process.^[1]