Iola Leroy was originally published in 1892, during a time of black disenfranchisement, lynching, and Jim Crow laws. It is the story of a "refined mulatto" raised to believe she's white until she and her mother are sold into slavery. Iola becomes an outspoken advocate for her people and a critic of race-mixing. Her story offers an important portrait of black life during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

First published in 1892, Iola Leroy was probably the best-selling novel by an African-American writer prior to the twentieth century. Frances Harper had already gained an international reputation as a writer, lecturer, and political activist when Iola Leroy—her only novel—appeared, as evident by the sizable audience she enjoyed of men and women, black and white, in the U.S., Canada, and England. Her writings reveal her in-depth knowledge of African-American literature as well as of other literatures, and through this novel we can see the preferences and aesthetic assumptions of her nineteenth-century audience.

The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women WritersGeneral Editor: HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.The past two decades have seen a dramatic resurgence of interest in black women writers, as authors such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker have come to dominate the larger African-American literary landscape. Yet the works of the writers who founded and nurtured the black women's literary tradition--nineteenth-century African-American women--have remained buried in research libraries or in expensive hard-to-find reprints, often inaccessible to twentieth-century readers.Oxford University Press, in collaboration with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research unit of The New York Public Library, rescued the voice of an entire segment of the black tradition by offering thirty volumes of these compelling and rare works of fiction, poetry, autobiography, biography, essays, and journalism. Responding to the wide recognition this series has received, Oxford now presents four more of these volumes in paperback (to add to the four already available). Each book contains an introduction written by an expert in the field, as well as an overview by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the General Editor.

Four autobiographical narratives written by African-American women from 1853 to 1902.

One of the most significant contributions to early Black literature, "Iola Leroy" is one of the best-selling novels by an African-American before the 20th century. With its intricate plot, about a mulatto who first assumes she is white, subsequently learns she is the daughter of a slave and is therefore black, and who ultimately makes the conscious choice not to pass for white but to live as a black woman, "Iola Leroy" is a novel filled with the complexities and contradictions of black-and-female existence in America in the nineteenth century. The author of "Iola Leroy," Frances E. W. Harper, was a persuasive and sensitive writer, a popular and articulate speaker, and friend of some of the best-known political activists, religious leaders, educators, and artists of her day. "Iola Leroy" tackles an array of issues affecting the black race, and America in general, during the late 19th century. These issues range from gender, to internalized racism among the Negro of lighter skin color, the infamous "Negro question," the hypocrisy of religion, and many others. The opening chapters in "Iola Leroy" about the slaves under slavery, the slaves during the civil war, their actual role in stopping the confederacy, the intelligence of the slaves, and all are not just idle depictions, but responses to those who felt slaves were incapable of revolution. Harper's analysis of the strength and struggle of the freedmen and freedwomen after slavery tends to also reply to the debate about whether they were worthy of freedom, and whether the fall of reconstruction was inevitable. Harper was optimistic about the future and potential of African-Americans, maintaining that the doors of education, religious freedom, and of economy and capitalism were open to the race. The most undeniable value of the book, is the call that the author makes for literacy, temperance, and the uplifting of the race.

A landmark account of the African American experience during the Civil War and its aftermath First published in 1892, this stirring novel by the great writer and activist Frances Harper tells the story of the young daughter of a wealthy Mississippi planter who travels to the North to attend school, only to be sold into slavery in the South when it is discovered that she has Negro blood. After she is freed by the Union army, she works to reunify her family and embrace her heritage, committing herself to improving the conditions for blacks in America. Through her fascinating characters-including Iola's brother, who fights at the front in a colored regiment-Harper weaves a vibrant and provocative chronicle of the Civil War and its consequences through African American eyes in this critical contribution to the nation's literature.