African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Joel Chandler Harris

I'll finish up this series of posts about Joel Chandler Harris with a link to this valuable compendium: The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris, edited by Richard Chase.

This massive book, over 900 pages, contains all the stories from the folktale books that Harris published: His Songs and Sayings (with its 34 stories), Nights with Uncle Remus (with 70 stories), Uncle Remus and His Friends (24 stories), Daddy Jake the Runaway (14 stories), Told by Uncle Remus (17 stories), Uncle Remus Returns (6 stories), Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit (6 stories), Uncle Remus and the Little Boy (6 stories), plus 7 stories that Harris left in draft form but which he never published: Mr. Crow and Brother Buzzard, Mr. Goat's Short Tail, The Baby and the Punkins, Brother Rabbit's Barbecue or How Brother Bear Exposed, Brother Rabbit at the Barbecue, Brother Bear Learns to Comb His Head, Why the Bear Is a Wrestler, and Brother Rabbit Doesn't Go to See Aunt Nancy (and yes, "Aunt Nancy" is an echo of Anansi, the spider trickster of western Africa).

I've done a listing for this book that includes brief summaries for all the stories; you can see that here: Complete Harris with summaries. For each of those stories, I've also provided a link that takes you to my edited-down version of the story where I've removed the Uncle Remus framework and also the eye-dialect spelling style.

Chase's book includes artwork from the various artists who illustrated Harris's books, and you can also find some Flickr albums with public domain illustrations here: Brer Rabbit Illustrations. There illustrations from 20 different Joel Chandler Harris books there (some books were published with illustrations by different artists).

So, if you are curious about the illustrations, especially the color illustrations (Chase's book is black-and-white only), then poke around there in the Flickr albums to see what you find. Most of those images come from pages of the books at the Internet Archive! 

I also made a widget that randomizes the illustrations, and links each illustration to its story source; just reload to see an image at random, or click on the "more information" link to go to that particular story.

I should also note that Richard Chase, the editor of the book, is an important American folklorist, and you can find out more about his life and work at Wikipedia. The Internet Archive has many of his books too:  folklore books by Richard Chase (I've alerted the nice people at the Archive about the wrong Wikipedia link there for the author's identity).

It's all just a click away at the Archive, thanks to Controlled Digital Lending.

The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus

by Joel Chandler Harris