Race in Literature

Showing 1–24 of 41 results

  • Black in America

    Black in America samples the breadth of non-fiction writing on African American experiences in the United States. The emphasis is on twenty-first-century authors such as…

  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

    Published in the bicentenary year of Frederick Douglass’s birth and in a Black Lives Matter era, this edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick…

  • Iola Leroy

    Frances Harper’s fourth novel follows the life of the beautiful, light-skinned Iola Leroy to tell the story of black families in slavery, during the Civil…

  • The Melting-Pot

    Israel Zangwill, an Anglo-Jewish author and son of immigrants, wrote The Melting-Pot to demonstrate how immigrants could become good American citizens, hoping to forestall the…

  • Othello

    Although other Shakespeare plays offer higher body counts, more gore, and more plentiful scenes of heartbreak, Othello packs an unusually powerful affective punch, stunning us…

  • Pizarro

    Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s last play, an adaptation of August von Kotzebue’s Die Spanier in Peru first performed in 1799, was one of the most popular…

  • Ida May

    The sentimental antislavery novel Ida May appeared so like its predecessor in the genre, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that for the month of November 1854, reviewers…

  • The Half-Caste

    Dinah Mulock Craik’s The Half-Caste concerns the coming-of-age of its title character, the mixed-race Zillah Le Poer, daughter of an English merchant and an Indian…

  • Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins

    The two narratives published together in The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins are overflowing with spectacular events. Twain shows us…

  • Clotel

    As nearly all of its reviewers pointed out, Clotel was an audience-minded performance, an effort to capitalize on the post—Uncle Tom’s Cabin “mania” for abolitionist…

  • The Garies and Their Friends

    Unjustly overlooked in its own time, Frank J. Webb’s novel of pre-Civil War Philadelphia weaves together action, humor, and social commentary. The Garies and Their…

  • The Female American – Second Edition

    When it first appeared in 1767, this novel was called a “sort of second Robinson Crusoe; full of wonders.” Indeed, The Female American is an…

  • The Octoroon

    Regarded by Bernard Shaw as a master of the theatre, Dion Boucicault was arguably the most important figure in drama in North America and in…

  • The Tragedy of Tragedies

    Best known today for the novels Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, Henry Fielding was just as renowned in his own time as a prolific and…

  • Mrs. Spring Fragrance

    Among the first works of fiction in English by a North American writer of Asian descent, the stories collected in Mrs. Spring Fragrance present a…

  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    From its first appearance onward, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been both praised and condemned, enshrined as one of the world’s great novels and banned…

  • Hamel, the Obeah Man

    Hamel, the Obeah Man is set against the backdrop of early nineteenth-century Jamaica, and tells the story of a slave rebellion planned in the ruins…

  • Thomas Clarkson and Ottobah Cugoano

    When abolitionists Thomas Clarkson and Ottobah Cugoano published their essays on slavery in the late eighteenth century, they became key participants in one of the…

  • An Imperative Duty

    An Imperative Duty tells the story of Rhoda Aldgate, a young woman on the verge of marriage who has been raised by her aunt to…

  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin

    With its gripping plot and pungent dialogue, Uncle Tom’s Cabin offers readers today a passionate portrait of a nation on the verge of disunion and…

  • The Last of the Mohicans

    The Last of the Mohicans enjoyed tremendous popularity both in America and abroad, offering its readers not only a variation on the immensely popular traditional…

  • The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan

    In 1810, the orientalist scholar Charles Stewart translated and published an extraordinary travel narrative written by a Persian-speaking Indian poet and scholar named Mirza Abu…

  • The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson

    In 1754 the British adventurer, compiler, and novelist Edward Kimber published The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson. Rooted in a tale…

  • A Sunless Heart

    In A Sunless Heart, Edith Johnstone establishes a feverish atmosphere for her novel’s story of emotional and physical hardship and the power of bonds between…