A New Kind of Literary Pulse

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist and poet, best known for her novel, Little Women. She grew up surrounded by intellectuals of her time, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and under the influence of her transcendentalist parents. Alcott was an abolitionist and an avid feminist for her time. She was part of a group of female writers during the Gilded Age who avidly ...  [+]

From a family of skilled laborers and land owners, she ran a school of African American children. In her poems, she tells about her children and the living conditions of African American families following the Civil War.

O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter, an American short story writer who is known for his tales about the life of ordinary people, especially in New York. His stories generally expressed the effect of coincidence on character through humour, grim or irony. Above anything else, he is known for his surprise endings. Once his trademark, it finally cost him critical favour.

First ever African-American female poet published, Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped in West Africa when she was 8 years old and brought to Boston on a slave ship. There, she was purchased by a tailor called John Wheatley to be his wife’s servant. The Wheatleys acknowledged Phillis' talents and allowed her to learn to read and write. Her first book was published in London in 1773.

Raymond G. Dandridge was nicknamed “The Paul Laurence Dunbar of Cincinnati” because his use of dialect and his subject matter closely matched that of 1900s poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dandridge emulated Dunbar’s works, but he also took part in the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, using his art as a means for the social advancement of blacks. Despite his relative seclusion from Harlem, New York, and the ...  [+]