Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Minnie's Sacrifice

Terry Novak (Johnson and Wales University)

Ed. by Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.2: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth Century, 1783-1900.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University)

Domains

Political Science

Dates

First circulation or publication 1868

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-fictional prose
Novel
Sentimental

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Minnie's Sacrifice

Sowing and Reaping

, and

Trial and Triumph

represent a significant boon to African-American literary studies in general and to the canon of Frances E. W. Harper specifically. The three novels were only recently re-discovered, in the early 1990's, by literary scholar Frances Smith Foster. Previous to this time, it was the assumption of the literary world that Harper's only novel was

Iola Leroy

. Through a great deal of literary detective work, Foster discovered the three missing novels, which had originally been serialized in

The Christian Recorder

, a vehicle of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church which had also published several of Harper's essays, short stories, and poems. Each of the three novels deals with the social issues of the day that were most pressing…

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764 words

Citation: Novak, Terry. "Minnie's Sacrifice". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 July 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10171, accessed 25 November 2024.]