Book excerpt: Joel Chandler Harris was an American journalist, fiction writer, and folklorist best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories. Harris wrote novels, narrative histories, translations of French folklore, children's literature, and collections of stories depicting rural life in Georgia. As fiction writer and folklorist, he wrote many 'Brer Rabbit' stories from the African-American oral tradition. He realized the literary value of the stories he had heard from the slaves of Turnwold Plantation. Harris set out to record the stories and insisted that they be verified by two independent sources before he would publish them. The stories, mostly collected directly from the African-American oral storytelling tradition, were revolutionary in their use of dialect, animal personages, and serialized landscapes. 1. The Uncle Remus Books — Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1881) — Nights with Uncle Remus (1883) — Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892) — The Tar-Baby and Other Rhymes of Uncle Remus (1904) — Told by Uncle Remus (1905) — Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit (1907) — Uncle Remus and the Little Boy (1910) — Uncle Remus Returns (1918) — Seven Tales of Uncle Remus (1948) 2. Mr. Thimblefinger Series — Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country (1894) — Mr. Rabbit at Home (1895) — The Story of Aaron (So Named), the Son of Ben Ali (1896) — Aaron in the Wildwoods (1897) 3. The Novels — The Romance of Rockville (1878) — On the Plantation (1892) — Sister Jane (1896) — Gabriel Tolliver (1902) — A Little Union Scout (1904) — Shadow between His Shoulder Blades (1909) — The Bishop and the Boogerman (1909) 4. The Shorter Fiction — Mingo and Other Sketches in Black and White (1884) — Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches (1887) — Daddy Jake, The Runaway: And Short Stories Told After Dark (1889) — Balaam and His Master and Other Sketches and Stories (1891) — Evening Tales (1893) — Stories of Georgia (1896) — Tales of the Home Folks in Peace and War (1898) — The Chronicles of Aunt Minervy Ann (1899) — Plantation Pageants (1899) — On the Wing of Occasions (1900) — The Making of a Statesman and Other Stories (1902) — Wally Wanderoon and His Story-Telling Machine (1903)