Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings by Joel Chandler Harris (1957 Heritage Press edition) presents a complex literary artifact that requires nuanced discussion. This edition revives Harris’s controversial 1881 collection of African-American folktales, featuring the trickster Br’er Rabbit and his encounters with Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear, as framed through the nostalgic recollections of the fictional Uncle Remus.
The Heritage Press production, typical of its mid-century quality, features:
- A sturdy slipcased volume with color plates reproducing A.B. Frost’s original illustrations
- An introduction by Bernard Wolfe that critically examines the work’s racial dimensions
- The complete text including plantation dialect that modern readers may find problematic
This edition occupies an uneasy space in American literary history – preserving important folklore traditions while perpetuating the “happy slave” stereotype through its framing device. The 1957 publication date coincides with the early Civil Rights Movement, making this release particularly historically significant as both a cultural preservation and a reminder of evolving social attitudes.
