Frances E W Harper

This was probably the best-selling novel by an Afro-American writer prior to the twentieth 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.

Frances Harper was renowned in her lifetime not only as an activist who rallied on behalf of blacks, women, and the poor, but as a pioneer of the tradition of 'protest' literature, whose immense popularity did much to develop an audience for poetry in America. This collection of her poems is drawn from ten volumes published between 1854 and 1901. Their main issues are oppression, Christianity, and social and moral reform. Consolidating the oral tradition and the ballad form, and merging dramatic details and imagery with a strong political and racial awareness, Harper's poetry represented a distinctly Afro-American discourse that was to inspire generations of black writers.