{"id":4408,"date":"2024-01-16T20:09:33","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T20:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oldsite.coloredconventions.org\/harper\/?page_id=4408"},"modified":"2025-04-09T23:15:47","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T23:15:47","slug":"novels","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/oldsite.coloredconventions.org\/harper\/writings\/novels\/","title":{"rendered":"Literary Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u200bHARPER AT 200<\/h3>\n

Literary Works<\/h1>\n

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s corpus encompasses a diverse range of literary forms, reflecting her multifaceted career as a writer, poet, and activist in nineteenth-century America. Her body of work includes several volumes of poetry, starting with Forest Leaves<\/em> (circa 1849), as well as her groundbreaking novel Iola Leroy. <\/em>Throughout her works, Harper consistently addressed themes of racial and gender equality, social justice, and the Black experience, making her corpus a significant and critical contribution to both literature and social reform movements of her time. Black newspapers often published her numerous essays and speeches on abolition and women’s rights, anti-slavery appeals, and public correspondences, leaving behind an archival trove that lends us insights into her life, literary inspirations, and relentless activism.<\/p>\n

A note on pioneering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper scholars:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Frances Smith Foster was the first scholar and author to publish a comprehensive reader on Harper in 1990; Foster’s\u00a0A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader<\/em> was as, the author noted, a project that was more “complicated than expected.”[1] Literary scholars have long ignored or tersely referenced Harper in spite of the national attention and well-respected stature she achieved in her time; Foster’s Harper reader thus reintroduced Harper’s legacy and contributions to American literature. More Black women scholars have done the work of redressing the cultural amnesia that erased nineteenth-century Black writers from public and scholarly attention; Melba Joyce Boyd’s Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911 <\/em>(1994), for one, was a crucial contribution that, like Foster, put the disregarded writer\/activist back on the map, centering how Harper’s intellectual thought, radical vision, and literary genius shaped American culture.[2]<\/p>\n

As more and more of Harper’s work are uncovered through digitization of historical documents, this exhibit will direct readers to online access to these works. Below is a list of Frances Ellen Watkins’ select accessible works.\u00a0
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Novels<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Minnie\u2019s Sacrifice<\/em> (1869)<\/a><\/p>\n

Sowing and Reaping<\/em>:\u00a0A Temperance Story<\/em> (1876\u20131877)<\/a><\/p>\n

Trial and Triumph<\/em> (1888\u20131889)<\/a><\/p>\n

Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted\u00a0<\/em>(1892)<\/a><\/p>\n

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Poetry Books<\/h3>\n

Forest Leaves<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(circa 184)Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects<\/em> <\/a>(1857)<\/p>\n

Sketches of Southern Life<\/em> <\/a>(1872)<\/p>\n

Idylls of the Bible<\/em><\/a> (1901)<\/p>\n

Poems<\/em><\/a> (1896)<\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

Short Stories and Essays<\/h3>\n

“The Two Offers”<\/a> (1859)<\/p>\n

“Our Greatest Want”<\/a> (1859)<\/p>\n

“The Triumph of Freedom\u2014A Dream” (1860)<\/p>\n

“Fancy Etchings” (1873)<\/p>\n

“The Mission of the Flowers”<\/a><\/p>\n

“Shalmanezer, Prince of Cosman”<\/a><\/p>\n

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Select Speeches<\/h3>\n

Address at the Celebration of Freedom in Maryland at Cooper Institute in New York (November 28, 1864)<\/a><\/p>\n

Address at the Anti-Slavery Society’s Celebration of West India Emancipation (August 1, 1865)<\/a><\/p>\n

Address at the National Hall, Philadelphia, PA (February 1, 1867)<\/a><\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text admin_label=”Credits” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

References<\/h3>\n

[1] Frances Smith Foster, A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper<\/em> Reader (New York: The Feminist Press, 1990), xv.<\/p>\n

[2] Melba Joyce Boyd, Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911<\/em> (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1994).<\/p>\n

Credits<\/h3>\n

Written and compiled by Samantha de Vera<\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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