Harriet Wilson

R. J. Ellis (University of Birmingham)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.5: African American Writing and Culture of the United States.
Vol. editors: Philathia Bolton (University of Akron), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), A Yemisi Jimoh (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University)

Dates

Born 15 Mar 1829
Died 28 Jun 1863
Activity 1859-1859

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Cultural Identities

African American

Activities

Primary

Autobiographer
Novelist

Resources

Very little is known about Harriet E. Wilson's life. This is partly because it was only in 1983, when Henry Louis Gates researched into and republished Wilson's novel, Our Nig, in a facsimile edition, that her identity was established for sure. Well over one hundred years had elapsed since the first, unnoticed publication of Our Nig in 1859, and in the intervening period, records had been lost or destroyed, and the people who knew Wilson had all died. Consequently, since 1983 the large-scale interest aroused by Our Nig, generally recognized to be the first published novel by an African American woman and the first African American novel published in America, has not been accompanied by much successful research into i…

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1351 words

Citation: Ellis, R. J.. "Harriet Wilson". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 January 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5038, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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