Frances E. W. Harper

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Standard Name: Harper, Frances E. W.
Birth Name: Frances Ellen Watkins
Married Name: Frances Ellen Harper
Pseudonym: Effie Afton
Nickname: The Brown Muse
An active lecturer and author in support of abolition, women's rights, and racial equality in the mid-nineteenth century, FEWH was, according to Henry Louis Gates, Jr , the first African-American professional woman of letters.
Gates, Henry Louis, William Wells Brown, Frances E. W. Harper, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, William Wells Brown, Frances E. W. Harper, and Charles Waddell Chesnutt. “Introduction”. Three Classic African-American Novels, Vintage Books, 1990, p. vii - xvii.
xii
She published eleven volumes of prose and poetry and a novel, and composed hundreds of speeches, letters, and essays which appeared in independent periodicals, and most of which remain uncollected. The full extent and significance of her oeuvre therefore awaits full assessment.
Graham, Maryemma, and Frances E. W. Harper. “Introduction”. Complete Poems of Frances E. W. Harper, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. xxxiii - lvii.
xxxv-xxxvi
Black and white three-quarter-length photo of Frances E. W. Harper, frontispiece to an edition of her "Poems", Philadelphia, 1898. She is standing, her hair parted in the middle and pulled back; she looks straight forward, direct but dreamy. She is wearing a long skirt and sleeveless top with a shirt under it, with bows at the collar. Her hands rest on a chairback.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Mary Ann Shadd Cary
Mary Ann Shadd developed a friendly relationship with Frances E. W. Harper , and a sometimes cordial, sometimes antagonistic, relationship with Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany on her lecture tours, through her work as editor...
Intertextuality and Influence Harriet Jacobs
HJ 's work fed into an emergent tradition of black American writing. Frances E. W. Harper 's ground-breaking novel Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted was probably influenced by her (its central black characters, from North...
Textual Features Mary Ann Shadd Cary
Samuel Ringgold Ward's Introductory editorial in the first issue of The Provincial Freeman, his sole contribution to the periodical, outlined its aims. He wrote that the paper would be devoted to the elevation of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Rebecca Harding Davis
RHD touches on public matters too. She keenly recalls the prejudice against Abolitionists in the period leading up to the Civil War, and records a glancing contact with John Brown , and her impressions of...

Timeline

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Texts

Harper, Frances E. W. Complete Poems of Frances E. W. Harper. Editor Graham, Maryemma, Oxford University Press, 1988.
Graham, Maryemma, and Frances E. W. Harper. “Introduction”. Complete Poems of Frances E. W. Harper, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. xxxiii - lvii.
Gates, Henry Louis, William Wells Brown, Frances E. W. Harper, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, William Wells Brown, Frances E. W. Harper, and Charles Waddell Chesnutt. “Introduction”. Three Classic African-American Novels, Vintage Books, 1990, p. vii - xvii.
Harper, Frances E. W. Iola Leroy. Garrigues, 1892.
Harper, Frances E. W. Moses: A Story of the Nile. Merrihew and Son, 1869.
Harper, Frances E. W. Poems. Merrihew and Son, 1871.
Harper, Frances E. W. Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects. J. B. Yerrinton and Son, 1854.