Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted. With an Introduction by Frances Smith Foster by Harper, Frances E[llen] W[atkins] - 1988

New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Hardcover. xxxix, 282p., frontis portrait and text in facsimile (from the "second edition"), hardbound in dark blue 6.7x4.8 inch cloth boards gilt. Casing is slightly dished with mild handling wear, endsheets show light stains (from binder's-paste migration?), a good-only copy. The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-century Black Women Writers. It is tempting to call Harper the female Frederick Douglass. Born to free Black parents in 1825, she gained an education and by 1854 had become a fiery lecturer on the twin subjects of antislavery and equal rights. She became "an internationally recognized journalist, the nineteenth century's most prolific Black novelist, and its best loved Black poet. Her novel Iola Leroy was written to correct the record on slavery and Reconstruction, to inspire African-Americans to be proud of their past and diligent in their work toward a greater future, and to persuade all Americans that a stronger sense of justice was essential to the peace and prosperity of the country." (Hine, p. 536). Iola Leroy, published in 1892, was her last major literary project.