(LITERATURE AND POETRY) HARPER FRANCES E W The Atlanta Offer

Sale 2171 - Lot 275

Price Realized: $ 5,040

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Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500

(LITERATURE AND POETRY.) HARPER, FRANCES E. W. The Atlanta Offering. Poems. Double frontispiece. 70 pages. Small 8vo, original red leather-grained paper-covered boards; extremities quite rubbed; small chip from center spine; paper at rear inner hinge slightly cracked. Enclosed in a custom-made 1/4 red morocco clamshell case. Philadelphia, 1895

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rare first edition. Frances Ellen Watkins (1825-1922), poet, novelist, activist and orator was born to free parents in Baltimore. She is the author of numerous poems, and the third novel by an African-American woman (Iola Leroy, 1892). The Atlanta Offering contains some of her most powerful poems. "The Martyr of Alabama," for example tells the story of a young Negro boy who, when he refused to dance for a bunch of white bullies, was beaten and shot to death on December 27th 1894. Harper''s poetry and prose were filled with racial themes and reflected her deep commitment to the cause of racial equality. In 1869 she participated with Frederick Douglass in the American Equal Rights Association''s debates over the 15th Amendment.