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A New Kind of Literary Pulse

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Eva A. Jessye

1885-1992

First black woman to receive international distinction as a professional choral conductor, Eva A. Jessye was an active supporter of the Civil Rights movement. She worked in New York with creative multi-racial teams in groundbreaking productions that experimented with form, music and stories.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

1825-1911

One of the first African-American women to be published in the United States, especially for novels (Iola Leroy, 1892), she was also a poet, an abolitionnist and a suffragist. Very popular and prolific writer, she died at age 85, nine years before women gained the right to vote.

George Marion McClellan

1860-1934

McClellan worked as a Congregationalist minister and as a high school teacher and principal. His writing, generally self-published, addresses religion, nature, and romantic love while only occasionally revealing an emotional struggle against racial discrimination.

George Moses Horton

1798-?

Known as the "Black bard of North Carolina", G. M. Horton wrote his first collection, The Hope of Liberty (1829), to earn enough money to purchase his freedom, but in vain. He did not become free until 1865, when Union troops and the Emancipation Proclamation reached North Carolina.

Georgia Douglas Johnson

1880 - 1966

A figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Georgia Douglas Johnson wrote plays, a syndicated newspaper column, and four collections of poetry: The Heart of a Woman (1918), Bronze (1922), An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), and Share My World (1962).

H.P. Lovecraft

1890 - 1937

An American author, Howard Phillips Lovecraft achieved posthumous fame for his horror fiction. During his life, he was virtually unknown by the American public, apart from his publications in pulp magazines. However, now he is regarded as one of the best and most influential 20th century writers of horror fiction.

Harriet Prescott Spofford

1835 - 1921

Harriet Spofford is still today one of the most widely-published American writers. She wrote novels, poems, and detective stories, spanning her career across more than six decades and many literary genres. She had an extraordinary gift for language and wrote beautiful, moving descriptions, evoking intense feelings.

Henry van Dyke

1852 - 1933

Henry Jackson van Dyke, Jr. was an American author, educator, and clergyman, especially well known for his poetry and two Christmas stories, "The Other Wise Man" and "The First Christmas Tree." You will find various religious themes expressed throughout his works. van Dyke was educated and would go on to teach English literature at Princeton University.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1807 - 1882

A member of the Romantic movement, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the best loved American poet of his lifetime. However, even though he was widely respected, he was also criticized for imitating European ways of writing and styles as well as for writing for masses exclusively. Nevertheless, he helped American literary life develop by exemplifying the possibility of a successful authorial career.

J. W. Hammond

?-?

Having very little opportunity for formal schooling because of family conditions, J. W. Hammond is a self-taught poet. She was included in James Weldon Johnson's "Book of American Negro Poetry" as a demonstration of "native ability to the highest degree."