Harper, Frances E.W.

Early Collections

She published her first poetry and prose collection, Forest Leaves, sometime between 1841 and 1845. [Page 481]In 1845, she published her collection of antislavery poems, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects. By 1858, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects sold over 12,000 copies; by 1874, it had gone through at least 20 editions.

Harper became known alternately as the Bronze Muse or the Brown Muse because of her many contributions to the fields of literature, journalism, and oration over the next six decades.

At 25, Harper moved to Columbus, Ohio, to become the first female professor at Union Seminary, which later became Wilberforce University. In 1854, Harper became one of the nation's earliest female professional lecturers when she signed with the Maine Anti-Slavery Society. In this position, Harper traveled throughout the United States and southern Canada, delivering abolitionist speeches interspersed with recitations of her original poetry. She was known as an expert and engaging speaker and earned a national reputation, although she did more than speak against slavery. In 1859, after the failure of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, she solicited aid for the revolutionaries and lived with and supported Mary Brown until after her husband's execution.

During this time, Harper contributed to many journals and periodicals in addition to her lectures and social uplift work. She also was an editor of and a contributor to the Anglo-African Magazine, which was the first African American literary journal. In 1859, she published The Two Offers, considered the first short story by an African American, in the Anglo-African Magazine. In 1860 she married Fenton Harper, a widower with three children. The couple had one daughter together, Rachel. Her career slowed during her marriage, while she devoted time to her husband and children. Upon Fenton Harper's death in 1864, however, Frances Harper resumed her career in order to support herself and her children.

Between 1867 and 1868, she published two novels. Both Minnie's Sacrifice and Sowing and Reaping: A Temperance Story appeared serially in The Christian Recorder, an Afro-Protestant periodical. Also in 1868 Harper published Moses, a Story of the Nile, a dramatic epic representing postbellum United States as a modern biblical narrative. In 1888 she published another novel, Trial and Triumph. During 1895, Harper published three separate collections of poetry: Atlanta Offering, Martyr of Alabama and Other Poems, and Poems. Harper became most well known for her 1892 novel, Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted.

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