Joel Chandler Harris was born an illegitimate child in Eatonton, Georgia on December 9, 1848. His father deserted him shortly before his birth. Because of this abandonment, Harris always sought for a father figure in his life and such a theme of abandonment was prevalent in much of his work. As a child, Harris was extremely mischievous but very shy, especially towards girls. This shyness lingered with him his entire life as he would later refuse to do any public readings of his works, due largely to a stuttering problem he procured as a young boy.
Harris’ mother provided his earliest inspirations for his writing career. She would tell him countless stories that he immensely enjoyed and cultivated in him a taste for the oral tradition. She also read him Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield, a work that wet his appetite for the humorous.
Joel’s first break in journalism came when he was 13 years old. On March 11, 1862, he secured a job with Addison Turner, a plantation owner in Turnwold, Georiga. Turner edited a paper entitled the Countryman, which ran from 1862-1866. Harris started out doing menial tasks and, as R. Bruce Bickley, Jr., a prominent Harris scholar, points out, “Like Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and William Dean Howells, Harris began his career as a man of letters by inking type and pulling on the press, looking meanwhile for a chance to get some of his own work in print” (Bickley 18). It was the four years Harris spent with Turner that had the most profound effect on Harris’ career and personal life. Turner helped to fill the void of the father in Harris’ life as well as boost his self-esteem. Turner also provided Harris with two pieces of advice that would forever shape his literary career: read literature as often as he could and always inject humor into his work. In Turner’s library, Harris became acquainted with the writings of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Geoffrey Chaucer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Johnathon Swift, the Grimms Brothers, and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as many other authors who had a significant influence on Harris’ work.
Harris’ first futile attempts at journalism were puns he wrote in the Countryman under the guise of the “Countryman’s Devil”. One example of Harris’ early journalism comes from the April 14, 1863 edition of the Countryman. It reads: “Why do the Yankees delay their attack upon the chief Rebel port? Because they find a Charleston too heavy for their gunboats to carry” (Bickley 21). The first article Harris submitted to Turner was turned down because Turner felt it was too lengthy and complex. He advised Harris, “study simplicity and artfulness of style….You have a talent for writing, and I advise you to cultivate it….There is a glorious field just ahead of you for Southern writers” (Bickley 21). Shortly after heeding this piece of advice, Harris published his first significant work in the Countryman and would go on to publish more than 30 such works before the paper ceased publication in 1866.
Though he worked diligently for Turner, Harris desired to be a poet and crafted much of his early style after Edgar Allan Poe, particularly Poe’s theme of the death of a beautiful woman. The last two lines of a poem by Harris entitled “Mary”, which was probably about his mother, reads as follows:
Like echoes of the mermaids’ sigh,
Or of the ocean’s swell,
Which poets say forever hide
Within the bright sea shell,
Thy image in my inmost heart
Will ever fondly dwell.
Thou art my thoughts each weary day,
My dreaming all the night,
And still I see thy gentle smile
And hear thy footstep light –
But tears are gathering in my eyes;
I cannot see to write.
Harris wrote a poem entitled “Accursed”, which dealt with a man killing himself and this poem is thought to be what Harris would have wished for his father. As Bickley states, “Harris’ earliest literary works…were inextricably tied to his own psychological history” (Bickley 22).
While it was Turner who did much to influence Harris’ journalistic style, it was his frequent visits to the slave quarters that would influence the tales for which he is most remembered, the Uncle Remus tales. While in the quarters, Harris was fascinated with the African folklore related to him by Terrell and Old Harbert, two slaves who also helped to feel the fatherly void in Harris’ life. It was in these slave quarters that “an image became fixed in Joe’s consciousness: that of a wise old Negro who was educating a young white boy about the black race’s folk heritage, but who was also finding opportunities to give him moral counsel or to chastise him whenever his mischievousness became too insistent” (Bickley 23).
Not long after the Civil War ended, Turner was forced to cease his publication of the Countryman because of his lack of funds. In the spring of 1866, Harris was forced to seek employment elsewhere, which he found in Macon, Georgia with a daily paper called the Telegraph. While working in Macon, Harris reviewed books but was never able to have any work of a considerable literary nature published. When offered a job at the Crescent, a magazine that sought to preserve and promote great southern literature, Harris accepted, hoping to have some of his own work published but there is never any evidence that this occurred. Discouraged, Harris returned to Georgia in 1867 and worked for the Monroe Advertiser. This was a major turning point in Harris’ journalistic career as the Advertiser began publishing short pieces that gained recognition from other papers, one of which was the Savannah Morning News, a leading Georgia paper. In 1870, the Morning News offered Harris a job as an assistant editor at a salary considerably higher than the norm.
While working with the Morning News, Harris wrote a humorous daily column entitled “State Affairs” and, later, “Affairs of Georgia”. This column helped establish Harris as a successful journalist as his work was admired by several other newspapers, including the Atlanta Constitution. While still working with the Morning News, Harris met Esther LaRose, whom he married in 1873. Esther played a very prominent role in helping Harris to overcome the depression he had suffered much of his life.
Harris would have remained with the Morning News had it not been for an outbreak of yellow fever in Savannah. In 1876, Harris moved to Atlanta with his wife and two children, intending only to stay in Atlanta until the epidemic in Savannah had passed. While in Atlanta, he was offered a temporary job at the Atlanta Constitution. The Constitution had already published previous works by Harris and was a major paper in the southeastern United States. This temporary position as an associate editor quickly became a permanent position as Harris, along with Henry W. Grady, helped the Constitution to become one of the leading papers in the nation.
It was during his time with the Constitution that Harris began publishing his tales about Uncle Remus, originally as sketches for the paper. In 1880, Harris published these sketches as a book entitled Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings. This work was Harris’ retelling of the African folk tales he had heard during his plantation days at Turnwold. Uncle Remus was a composite of Terrell and Old Harbert, the slaves who had influenced Harris in a very impacting way. This publication won Harris tremendous fame and he was praised for his use of southern and Negro dialects in his work.