This was probably the best-selling novel by an Afro-American writer prior to the 20th century. Published in 1892, it went through five impressions in one year. Frances Harper had already gained an international reputuation as a writer, lecturer, and political activist when this, her only novel, was published. It enjoyed a wide readership among men and women, black and white, in the US, Canada, and Britain.

Setting out to correct the inadequacies of many written accounts of slavery, teacher and social activist Octavia Albert added her own incisive commentary to the personal narratives of former slaves. Her early interviews, like many antebellum slave narratives, depict cruel punishments, divided families, and debilitating labour. Seeing herself as a public advocate for social change, Albert called for every Christian's personal acceptance of responsibility for slavery's legacies and lessons. As well as its historical value, the book has many merits as a work of literature, using dialogue and...

The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers
General Editor: HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.
The past two decades have seen a dramatic resurgence of interest in black women writers, as authors such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker have come to dominate the larger African-American literary landscape. Yet the works of the writers who founded and nurtured the black women's literary tradition--nineteenth-century African-American women--have remained buried in research libraries or in expensive hard-to-find reprints, often inaccessible to twentieth-century...

Setting out to correct the inadequacies of many written accounts of slavery, teacher and social activist Octavia Albert added her own incisive commentary to the personal narratives of former slaves, and called for every Christian's personal acceptance of responsibility for slavery's legacies and lessons.

This abridgement of The Oxford Companion to African American Literature collects more than 400 biographies (authors, critics, literary characters and historical figures) of both well-known figures and the lives and careers of writers not found in other reference works. The abridgement also includes the 150 plot summaries of major works. The editors include the biographic details for author entries to include mention of major works, death dates, and awards. The volume reprints in its entirety the five-part 15-page essay, Literary History, capturing the full sweep of African-American writing in...

Born into slavery, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley rose to a position of respect as a talented dressmaker and designer to the political elite of Washington, DC, and a confidante of First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln. This memoir offers a behind-the-scenes view of the formal and informal networks that African Americans established among themselves.

Originally serialized in issues of The Christian Recorder between 1886 and 1888, the three works contained in this text have been specially written for a black audience.

Conventional wisdom tells us that marriage was illegal for African Americans during the antebellum era, and that if people married at all, their vows were tenuous ones: "until death or distance do us part." It is an impression that imbues beliefs about black families to this day. But it's a perception primarily based on documents produced by abolitionists, the state, or other partisans. It doesn't tell the whole story.

Drawing on a trove of less well-known sources including family histories, folk stories, memoirs, sermons, and especially the fascinating writings from the Afro-Protestant...

Cheryl Clarke, Angela Davis, bell hooks, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker--from the pioneers of black women's studies comes Still Brave: The Evolution of Black Women's Studies, the definitive collection of race and gender writings today. Including Alice Walker's groundbreaking elucidation of the term "womanist," discussions of women's rights as human rights, and a piece on the Obama factor, the collection speaks to the ways that feminism has evolved and how black women have confronted racism within it.