Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (The ^ASchomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers)

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.