One of the most promising writers to publish during the Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larsen has earned a reputation as an important Afro-American novelist on the basis of two books, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929). Both novels show a skillful handling of narrative and symbolism, as well as a complexity of vision, that place them among the best fiction produced by New Negro authors in the 1920s.

Biographical data on Larsen has been scanty and often erroneous; however, recent scholarship has uncovered some of the facts of Larsen's biography. Born in Chicago, Illinois, on 13 April 1891, Larsen was the daughter of a Danish mother and, apparently, a West Indian father; she frequently alluded to her "mulatto" status. In an autobiographical sketch written for her publisher in 1926, Larsen says her father died when she was two years old; "shortly afterward her mother married a man of her own race and nationality." She provided...