In the last decade, scholarship has shown Frances Ellen Watkins Harper to be one of the most significant U.S. writers of the nineteenth century. The author of several books of poetry, four novels, many essays and speeches, at least two short stories, and many additional poems, Harper not only produced an impressive canon of literary works, she also was tremendously popular, as the regular reprintings of her works demonstrate. She wrote to instruct and inspire, to chastise and move to action; hers was a literature dedicated not just to uplifting the race, but to making evident through her indignation and outrage the unjust and immoral conditions under which African Americans were forced to struggle under slavery and within the racist society that was its legacy. Her significance resides in her experimentation with and creation of new literary forms; her merging of political, social, religious, cultural, and ethical...