A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader [Paperback]

Frances Smith Foster (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1993

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was the best known and best loved African-American poet of her time, as well as a teacher and lecturer on abolition, suffrage, education, and many other topics. This anthology contains all of her extant poetry and a generous selection of prose and letters, and provides moving portraits of suffering under slavery, as well as of freedom, love, infidelity, poverty, and heroism. As The New York Times Book Review notes, “This anthology . . . not only provides the first modern biography of Harper, but also illuminates her connection to . . . 20th-century writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison.”

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The first autobiographical picture of Harper's life (1825-1911), this informative introduction approaches her through her complete extant works: speeches, poetry, letters, essays, short stories, and a chapter from her novel, Iola Leroy (the second novel published by an African-American). Foster shows that Harper's work took on a national scope, focusing on race and gender equality, temperance, and Christian reform, and that these themes intensified as she continued writing well after the emancipation. Harper was the most popular African-American poet of her time; the first paid black abolitionist lecturer and short story writer; the first to experiment with dialect in the speech of her characters to express the sensibilities of the oppressed (a technique usually credited to the younger Dunbar); and the first to develop heroic black characters. Foster maintains that the nation's racist reaction to emancipation and sexist reaction to the woman's movement at the turn of the century resulted in Harper's absence from the literary canon. Highly recommended.
-Veronica Mitchell, New York
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER (1825 - 1911) published 12 volumes of poetry, a novel, stories, and essays. FRANCES SMITH FOSTER is professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY (January 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558610200
• ISBN-13: 978-1558610200
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #884,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive compilation with historical info, February 23, 2007

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M. E. Kelly (State College, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader (Paperback)

I recently did research on Ms. Harper, and this book was so good, I actually added it to my collection. This is the only book that has all her work in one place. Ms. Foster also does a nice job of setting up each chapter with information about the history going on at the time of original publication. The only drawback, very slight, is that Harper's best known novel, Iola Leroy, isn't reprinted in full here, there are only excerpts.
Overall a great way to get to know an African American woman author who has unfortunately been forgotten for too long.