Joel Chandler Harris was an American journalist and folklorist best known for the Uncle Remus stories and their resourceful animal trickster, Brer Rabbit. His collections brought African American oral tales to a large reading audience. Their literary importance is inseparable from questions about the white author's framing of Black storytelling and his representations of life under slavery.

Born in Eatonton, Georgia, Harris worked as an apprentice on a plantation, where he heard stories from enslaved people. He later built a newspaper career and spent much of his adult life in Atlanta, working for the Atlanta Constitution. Journalism and fiction developed alongside one another, giving him outlets for both social commentary and narrative experiment.

The animal tales he collected often turn on wit overcoming superior strength, with Brer Rabbit outmaneuvering more powerful opponents. Their roots reach into African and African American traditions that extend far beyond Harris himself. His books remain significant records of the tales as he adapted them, while their dialect and nostalgic plantation setting require critical attention. Reading them with that context helps distinguish the inventiveness of the storytelling tradition from the assumptions of its literary presentation.