One of Chesnutt's most important works was The Conjure Woman (1899), a collection of stories set in postbellum North Carolina. The lead character Uncle Julius, a formerly enslaved man, entertains a white couple from the North, who have moved to the farm, with fantastical tales of antebellum plantation life. Julius' tales feature such supernatural elements as haunting, transfiguration, and conjuring, which were typical of Southern African-American folk tales. But Uncle Julius is also telling the stories in ways crafted to achieve his own goals and care for his circle. Retrieved December 8, 2013. Julius' tales are similar to Joel Chandler Harris' collection of folktales, the Uncle Remus tales, but differ in that they indirectly provide commentary on slavery and racial inequality, and the psychological and social effects therein. Controversially, some argue that these stories reinforce African American stereotypes, but for the most part, critics typically agree that the stories are elevated by their allegorical depiction of racial injustice. Seven of the Uncle Julius tales were collected in The Conjure Woman. Chesnutt wrote a total of fourteen Uncle Julius tales, the remainder of which were later collected in The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales, edited by Richard H. Brodhead and published posthumously in 1993.
