Frances Smith Foster

As the Civil War bears down on a small North Carolina town, a tight-knit community of enslaved men and women is preparing for the coming battle and the possibility of freedom. Into this ensemble cast of characters comes Iola Leroy, a young woman who grew up unaware of her African ancestry until she is lured back home under false pretenses and immediately enslaved. Amidst a backdrop of battlefield hospitals and clandestine prayer meetings, this quietly stouthearted novel is a story of community, integrity, and solidarity. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was already one of the most prominent African-American poets of the nineteenth century when—at age 67—she turned her focus to novels. Her most enduring work, Iola Leroy, was one of the first novels published by an African-American writer. Although the book was initially popular with readers, it soon fell out of print and was critically forgotten. In the 1970s, the book was rediscovered and reclaimed as a seminal contribution to African-American literature.

The Oxford Companion to African American Literature provides the first comprehensive one-volume reference work devoted to this rich tradition, surveying the length and breadth of black literary history, focusing in particular on the lives and careers of more than 400 writers. Here, too, are general articles on the traditional literary genres, such as poetry, fiction, and drama; on genres of special import in African American letters, such as autobiography, slave narratives, Sunday school literature, and oratory; and on a wide spectrum of related topics, including journalism, the black periodical press, major libraries and research centers, religion, literary societies, women's clubs, and various publishing enterprises. Finally, the five-part, fifteen-page essay, Literary History, captures the full sweep of African American writing in the United States, from the colonial and early national eras right up to the present day. The Companion also features a comprehensive subject index; extensive cross-referencing; and bibliographies after almost every article.