... format, as more tales emerged, it was no longer enough to remain strictly autobiographical - a narrative's success relied on "the narrator's ability to create a common bond between reader and narrator"1. In this essay I intend to concentrate on two authors who created this bond between their narrators and their readers, with narratives that to this day remain the amongst the most widely read - and startlingly individual - slave narratives. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, was published in 1845 and became an instant bestseller, selling 30,000 copies within its first five years. Even now, it is considered a model for all following slave narratives. Individual in a very different way, Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was one of the first slave narratives written by a woman, and raised awareness not only of the atrocities of slavery in general, but ...

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