The original tale of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby appeared in the Cherokee Advocate in 1845, but a number of similar Cherokee and African Slave stories involving a rabbit trickster appeared around the same time. In this story, which is filled with fairly heavy dialect, the author tells us how Brer Rabbit uses his wits to convince his enemies, fox and wolf, to cast him into a patch of briars rather than to get even with him using a more conventional (and more successful) method. Only when the deed has been done, do fox and wolf realize they have been tricked. The author, Joel Chandler Harris, (1845-1908) started collecting materials for a series of books featuring the character of Brer Rabbit in the 1870’s. Mr. Harris had become familiar with many of the stories he wrote down during the time he worked as a printer’s devil for a newspaper run by Joseph Turnwold, who also owned a plantation using slave labor. In later years, he worked for other newspapers and magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post. A number of other well-known authors such as Mark Twain and A. A. Milne have credited Harris with influencing their own writing careers.
Author
Joel Chandler Harris was an American journalist born in Eatonton, Georgia who wrote the Uncle Remus stories, including Uncle Remus; His Songs and His Sayings, The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation, (1880), Nights with Uncle Remus (1881 & 1882), Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), and Uncle Remus and the Little Boy (1905). The stories, based on the African-American oral storytelling tradition, were revolutionary in their use of dialect and in featuring a trickster hero called Br'er ("Brother") Rabbit, who uses his wits against adversity, though his efforts do not always succeed. The frog is the trickster character in traditional tales in Central and Southern Africa. The stories, which began appearing in the Atlanta Constitution in 1879, were popular among both Black and White readers in the North and South, not least because they presented an idealized view of race relations soon after the Civil War. The first published Brer Rabbit stories were written by President Theodore Roosevelt's uncle, Robert Roosevelt.
