Larsen's status as a Harlem Renaissance woman writer was rivaled by only Zora Neale Hurston's. This Norton Critical Edition of her electrifying 1929 novel includes Carla Kaplan's detailed and thought-provoking introduction, thorough explanatory annotations, and a Note on the Text. An unusually rich "Background and Contexts" section connects the novel to the historical events of the day, most notably the sensational Rhinelander/Jones case of 1925. Fourteen contemporary reviews are reprinted, including those by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Mary Griffin, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Published accounts from...

"Absolutely absorbing, fascinating, and indispensable." Alice Walker
"A work so fine, sensitive, and distinguished that it rises above race categories and becomes that rare object, a good novel." The Saturday Review of Literature
Married to a successful physician and prominently ensconced in Harlem's vibrant society of the 1920s, Irene Redfield leads a charmed existence-until she is shaken out of it by a chance encounter with a childhood friend who has been "passing for white." An important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larsen was the first African-American woman to be...

Hypocrisy and prejudice compel a principled mulatto teacher to desert a steady job and a socially prominent fiance.

Nella Larsen was an important writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. While she was not prolific her work was powerful and critically acclaimed. Collected here are all three of her published short stories; "Freedom," "The Wrong Man," and "Sanctuary." These stories are about love, loss, mistaken identity, and death.

Nella Larsen was an important writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. While she was not prolific her work was powerful and critically acclaimed. Collected here are both of her novels, Passing and Quicksand.

Quicksand, was autobiographical in nature and examined a womans need for sexual fulfilment balanced against respectability and acceptance amid a deeply religious society. The novel is deeply pessimistic and ends as the protagonist is sucked into a life that is at odds with all that she had desired.

Passing confronts the reality of racial passing. The novel focuses on two...

Nella Larsen was an important writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. While she was not prolific her work was powerful and critically acclaimed. Quicksand, was autobiographical in nature and examined a woman's need for sexual fulfilment balanced against respectability and acceptance amid a deeply religious society.

Two light-skinned African American women, friends since childhood, have chosen to embrace their identities and live their lives in completely different ways.

The Nella Larsen Collection is comprised of five Nella Larsen fiction including; Quicksand, Passing, Freedom, The Wrong Man, and Sanctuary. Quicksand, Larsen's first novel, tells the story of Helga Crane who is the lovely and refined daughter of a Danish mother and a West Indian black father who abandons Helga and her mother soon after Helga is born. Unable to feel comfortable with any of her white-skinned relatives, Helga travels America, visits Denmark searching for people she feels at home with. In Passing Clare and Irene are childhood friends who lose touch when Clare's father dies and...