Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins: Black Daughter of the Revolution

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins: Black Daughter of the Revolution by Brown, Lois. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780807831663.

Born into an educated free black family in Portland, Maine, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859-1930) was a pioneering playwright, journalist, novelist, feminist, and public intellectual, best known for her 1900 novel Contending Forces: A Romance of Negro Life North and South. In this critical biography, Lois Brown documents for the first time Hopkinss early family life and her ancestral connections to eighteenth-century New England, the African slave trade, and twentieth-century race activism in the North.Brown includes detailed descriptions of Hopkinss earliest known performances as a singer and actress; textual analysis of her major and minor literary works; information about her most influential mentors, colleagues, and professional affiliations; and details of her battles with Booker T. Washington, which ultimately led to her professional demise as a journalist.Richly grounded in archival sources, Browns work offers a definitive study that clarifies a number of inconsi