Both before and after emancipation in the 19th century, African American women writers who took up the pen to write full books or other substantial bodies of work were rare indeed. Consider that before the Civil War, it was illegal to teach African Americans to read in many states, not just the South. So writing a novel or autobiography was a radical act for a Black woman of those times.
Not surprisingly, many of the books, essays, and poetry produced by Black women of that era were about enslavement. Often, they took the form of autobiographies or thinly veiled novels. What’s most important is that starting in the 1850s, Black women writers, both free and formerly enslaved, began to use their pens to document their experiences.
Here are five fascinating 19th-century African American women writers whose talent and daring are ripe for rediscovery. Please note: Language describing enslavement has evolved. For example, “slave” is now termed “enslaved [woman, man, person];” “fugitive” is a construct that’s no longer used. However, if the archaic terms are part of titles I have to leave them intact.
Hannah Bond (aka Hannah Crafts)
Hannah Bond (pen name Hannah Crafts, born 1830s – date of death unknown; no known images) escaped enslavement around 1857 and settled in New Jersey. Her only known book was The Bondswoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts, Fugitive Slave from North Carolina.
This autobiographical novel, likely written in the 1850s or 1860s, is one of the first novels written by an African American woman, and uniquely by an enslaved person who sought freedom.
Not much is known about Hannah’s life, though from details in her novel it’s inferred that she was of mixed race and enslaved in Virginia. The manuscript of The Bondswoman’s Narrative was discovered some one hundred fifty years later by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., then authenticated and published for the first time in 2002.
A September 18, 2013 story in the New York Times described the author’s daring escape and revealed how her true identity was uncovered.
Learn more about The Bondswoman’s Narrative.
Julia C. Collins
Julia C. Collins (1842 – 1865), believed to have been freeborn, worked as a schoolteacher in Pennsylvania once she reached young adulthood. In 1864, she began to write essays of racial uplift for The Christian Recorder, produced by the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The Curse of Caste, or The Slave Bride was serialized in The Christian Recorder beginning in early 1865. It’s the story of a mixed-race mother and her daughter who encounter barriers to love and opportunity due to their enslavement and racial bias. Not much is known about Julia Collins’ short life, though apparently, she was well educated.
Unfortunately, she didn’t live to finish her novel, dying of tuberculosis (then called consumption) in late November of 1865. The Curse of Caste, along with Julia’s other writings, were collected and published with analysis and commentary in 2006 by Oxford University Press.
The Curse of Caste is considered a great discovery, a story that in real time explored race and gender issues, interracial love, and oppression in American life. Here’s a review of the 2006 edition in the New York Times.
Read The Curse of Caste online.
Frances Watkins Harper
Frances Watkins Harper (1825 – 1911) was an ardent suffragist, social reformer, and abolitionist in addition to her renown as a poet and author. She wrote prolifically from the time she published her first collection of poetry in 1845, at the age of twenty. Freeborn in Baltimore, Maryland, she was also known as Frances E. W. Harper and her full name, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
Frances became active in anti-slavery (as they were then called) societies in the early 1850s and was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. She also began lecturing and was widely praised as a compelling public speaker. Her 1854 collection Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects was one of her most successful publications.
Much later, the novel Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892) was another critical and commercial success. Her heartbreaking poem "The Slave Mother" is arguably her best known.
Frances Harper published some eighty poems in her lifetime, which, in consideration with her fiction and nonfiction works, should have earned her a prominent place in American literature. More:
Harriet Ann Jacobs
Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813 – 1897) is best remembered for Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861). After repeated rejections, Harriet decided to self-publish the book, an impressive feat for any woman of that era, let alone one that had spent years on the run.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an autobiographical novel. According to the 1987 Harvard University Press edition: “Harriet A. Jacobs … recorded her triumphant struggle for freedom in an autobiography that was published pseudonymously in 1861 … Incidents is the major antebellum autobiography of a Black woman.”
Writing pseudonymously as “Linda Brent," the book’s narrator, Jacobs recounts the history of her family: a remarkable grandmother who hid her for seven years; a brother who escaped and spoke out for abolition; her two children, who she rescued and sent north.
Incidents is also notable for its brutal honesty about the sexual abuse of female slaves. Learn more about Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl online
Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley
Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (1818 – 1907), born into enslavement and later emancipated, became a successful seamstress and social reformer before writing Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868).
This autobiography traces her journey from enslavement in Virginia and North Carolina to become the seamstress of Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln, during her years as First Lady.
In 1860, she bought her own freedom and that of her son and moved to Washington, D.C. There, she built an impressive dressmaking business, serving the wives of the capital’s elite. Not only did she sew Mrs. Lincoln’s clothing, she also became her close confidante.
Elizabeth’s portrait of the First Family sparked a bit of controversy since it broke some rules of privacy. Still, her warm and intimate friendship with Mrs. Lincoln endured. Interestingly, George Saunders’ 2016 novel Lincoln in the Bardo quotes passages from Behind the Scenes.
Elizabeth Keckley may not have been a literary figure per se, but the importance of Behind the Scenes, coupled with her successful dressmaking business as a newly minted member of the Black middle class, made her a notable figure worth reconsidering.
Read Behind the Scenes online
In other news …
My son, Evan Atlas, a philosophical writer, recently wrote a piece for the Literary Ladies Guide site titled “5 Life-Changing Books by Women Writers” which he republished here on his Substack. It’s a great introduction to group of brilliant women. I knew nothing about them (other than just a little about Iris Murdoch) until I read his piece. I love learning from my young adult offspring!
Bob Eckstein and I are creating a book together (I’m the writer, he’s the illustrator) on the bond between well-known writers past and present and their cats (September, 2025). His recently released book, Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums is getting all kinds of press coverage, including this NY Times piece (sorry; paywall). Join Bob’s Substack for humor, insights on the writing life, and more. He’s pretty fascinating, himself.
What I’m reading this week …
I finished James by Percival Everett, my book group’s next selection, a retelling of Huckleberry Finn through the eyes of his enslaved companion Jim. It is an incredible work of literature, and I can’t recommend it enough; I listened on audiobook which I believe added much to the experience.
Still working on the 42-hour audiobook of Forever Amber. This hugely bestselling yet widely banned 1944 book by Kathleen Winsor came out when she was just 24. Imagine setting Scarlett O’Hara in Restoration England (late 1600s). It’s a well done yarn, but really, really long. Just 7 hours to go!
Explore my other Substack, The Vegan Atlas.