Joel Chandler Harris

Joel Chandler Harris was internationally famous in his own time and has a surprisingly broad scholarly and popular following in ours. His portraits of slaves and former slaves, particularly Uncle Remus and Free Joe, poor whites, and Brer Rabbit, the archetypal trickster hero, have influenced many other writers, including Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and a wide array of children's authors from Beatrix Potter to A. A. Milne. Harris also left a lasting mark on popular culture, most clearly manifested through Disney's ^ISong of the South^R and at Disney World attractions featuring versions of Harris's characters. He singlehandedly preserved and made internationally famous the Brer Rabbit folktales, the largest body of African American oral folklore that the world has ever known. Additionally, Harris was a major New South journalist who accelerated the process of reconciliation between North and South and promoted racial tolerance after the Civil War.

This reference book is a complete bibliographic guide to the scholarly response to Harris during the last two decades. The introduction explores such issues as Harris's renderings of black dialect, Southern character, and folklore, and his influence on popular culture. The first part is a supplement to Bickley's earlier bibliography of Harris, which covered the period 1862-1976. The second part provides more than 300 entries for books, articles, and dissertations about Harris published after 1976. Entries are grouped in sections according to year of publication, and then alphabetically within each section. Each entry is fully annotated, and a detailed index concludes the volume.

R. BRUCE BICKLEY, Jr. is Professor of English and Director of the University Honors Program at Florida State University. His publications include numerous book chapters, articles, and reviews, along with several books: The Method of Melville's Short Fiction (1975), Joel Chandler Harris (1978), Joel Chandler Harris: A Reference Guide (1978), and Critical Essays on Joel Chandler Harris (1981).

HUGH T. KEENAN is Professor of English at Georgia State University. He has edited three special issues on Medieval literature and children's fiction for Studies in the Literary Imagination and a special issue on Joel Chandler Harris for The Atlanta Historical Journal. He is the author of dozens of articles, chapters and, reviews, and his books include Typology and English Medieval Literature (1992) and Dearest Chums and Partners: The Letters of Joel Chandler Harris to His Children (1993).