![]() ![]() It began to garner more serious attention in the mid-1980s just about the time its status as “first” was displaced by Emma Dunham Kelley’s novel Megda (1891) and then by the rediscovery of Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig (1859). Almost all agreed on at least one thing: they considered Iola Leroy a failure both aesthetically and politically.įrances Smith Foster’s rediscovery of Frances Harper’s first three novels 2 and the convergence of the rapidly growing fields of African-American women’s writing, cultural studies and women’s history, has facilitated a growing reconsideration of Iola Leroy. Countless critics of various methodological and ideological persuasions derided the novel for its seeming historical amnesia, myopia, and racial and sexual restraint. Though it was long considered the “first” novel written by an African-American woman, more often than not it was noted for only that. Until fairly recently, time had not been kind to Frances E. ![]()
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