Uncle Remus or Mr Fox, Mr Rabbit and Mr Terrapin

Uncle Remus is the fictional title character and narrator of a collection of black American folktales compiled and adapted by Joel Chandler Harris and published in book form in 1881. Harris was a journalist in post-Reconstruction Atlanta, and he produced seven Uncle Remus books. He wrote these stories to represent the struggle in the Southern United States, and more specifically in the plantations. He did so by introducing tales that he had heard and framing them in the plantation context. He wrote his stories in a dialect which represented the voice of the narrators and their subculture. For this choice of framing, his collection has encountered controversy.

After the first book appeared in 1880, Joel Chandler Harris was deluged with letters from readers all over the country asking for more stories of Brer Rabbit and his friends--so for the remaining years of his life he collected and wrote them. Richard Chase, noted folklorist and author of Jack Tales and Grandfather Tales, compiled and edited the volume after Harris s death, and his occasional footnotes and word definitions contribute to our understanding of the dialect. Chase s belief in the importance of folktales and Harris s work is summed up in his foreword: "These tales grew up in the soil of our nation. They came from the soul of a people. They endure."