Harriet Ann Jacobs autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl documents her life as a slave and how she attained freedom for herself and her children. Harrowing in its descriptions of sexual abuse, Jacobs slave narrative is notable for its appeal to abolitionist women to open their eyes to the realities of slavery. Deemed too shocking for reading audiences at the time, the book was shelved for a time before it was published in 1861 near the start of the Civil War.