Winner of the College Language Association Book Award Frances Smith Foster has rediscovered three novels by Frances E. W. Harper, the best-known African-American writer of the nineteenth century and author of the classic Iola Leroy. Originally serialized in issues of The Christian Recorder between 1868 and 1888, these works address issues of passing, social responsibility, courtship, sexuality, and temperance, and are the first to have been written specifically for an African-American audience.

Minnie's Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping, Trial and Triumph: Three Rediscovered Novels

Humor & Entertainment

Harper, Frances

Humor

Beacon Press

Iola Leroy was originally published in 1892, during a time of black disenfranchisement, lynching, and Jim Crow laws. It is the story of a "refined mulatto" raised to believe she's white until she and her mother are sold into slavery. Iola becomes an outspoken advocate for her people and a critic of race-mixing. Her story offers an important portrait of black life during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Iola Leroy (Black Women Writers Series)

Literature & Fiction

United States

One of the first novels published by an African American woman, "Iola Leroy" is the progressive 1892 novel by famed American abolitionist, suffragist, teacher, and writer, Frances Harper. Born free in Baltimore, Maryland in 1825, Frances Harper came to live with the family of William Still, noted conductor of "The Underground Railroad", and in 1853 joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and began a career as a public speaker and activist for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights. Many of the serious social issues which Harper was concerned with are robustly discussed in this work, including the injustice of slavery, the civil rights of former slaves in post slavery America, the rights of women in society, interracial relationships, temperance, and post civil war reconstruction. The story concerns the tale of Eugene Leroy, a wealthy slaveholder who frees and marries one of his slaves, having three children with her. One of these children is the titular Iola, who has been "passing" as white because of her light skin and whose life is thrown into turmoil when her father dies and her African ancestry is brought to light. Over a hundred years after its first publication "Iola Leroy" remains as an important novelization of the dynamic political environment around race relations in mid to late 19th century America. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Iola Leroy

Digireads.com

2015 Reprint of 1892 Edition. This is one of the first novels published by an African-American woman. While following what has been termed the "sentimental" conventions of late nineteenth-century writing about women, it also deals with serious social issues of education for women, passing, miscegenation, abolition, reconstruction, temperance, and social responsibility. Harper's novel remains important as one of the earliest novels written by an African American and as a fictional work dealing with complex issues of race, class, and politics in the United States. Recent scholarship suggests that Harper's novel provides a sophisticated understanding of citizenship, gender, and community, particularly the way that African Americans developed hybrid forms of "gemeinschaft" and "gesellschaft" before, during, and after slavery.

Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted

Martino Fine Books

Shadows Uplifted Volume I: Black Women Authors of 19th Century American Fiction

A landmark anthology of full-length works by Black American women writers of the 19th century including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Harriet Jacobs, and Mary Weston Fordham-edited and with an introduction by C.S.R. Calloway. Shadows Uplifted collects and celebrates the vibrant and diverse work of these often unsung Black female writers, meticulously preserving their words while making them newly accessible to modern readers of all genders and backgrounds. Collected here for the first time in a single volume are: <ul><li>Frances E. W. Harper's 1892 novel Iola Leroy, an examination of multiracial identity within one family during and after the Civil War.</li><li>Julia C. Collins's 1865 novel The Curse of Caste, written the very year the Civil War ended and chronicling the lives of a mother and her daughter during the antebellum age.</li><li>A. E. Johnson's 1894 novel The Hazeley Family, telling the story of Flora Hazeley and the impact of her moral standings.</li></ul> "Let us continue to uplift such shadows in our history, allowing them their corporeal bodies, flesh, blood, and melanated skin. Let us continue to uplift Black women: supporting and honoring their stories, their art, and their existence." - C.S.R. Calloway

Collins, Julia

CSRC Storytelling

Sky Forest Adventure: Owl Coloring Book for Finding Serenity

Children's Books

Animals

Independently published

Action & Adventure

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Books by Harper, Frances