Iola Leroy

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Iola Leroy or, Shadows Uplifted is an 1892 novel by African-American author Frances Harper. Iola Leroy, the titular protagonist, is a mulatto woman, the daughter of a plantation-owner and a slave, living in the South at the close of the Civil War. Iola, rescued from slavery by Union soldiers, declines to pass for white when New England suitor Dr. Gresham makes it a condition of his proposal that she never reveal her race. Rather, Iola marries black Dr. Frank Lattimer and returns to North Carolina to fight for "racial uplift." The novel also features Iola's search for her family, from whom she was separated in the war; after a series of coincidences, the family is reunited.

Iola Leroy was for some time cited as the first novel by an African-American author, a place it held until Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s rediscovery of Harriet Wilson's 1853 Our Nig in 1983.

[edit] References

• Carroll, William. "Frances Ellen Watkins Harper." Cyclopedia of World Authors. Salem Press, 1997.

• Logan, Shirley W. "Iola Leroy." Masterplots II: African-American Literature Series. Salem Press, 1994.

[edit] External links

• Iola Leroy, available freely at Project Gutenberg
• Literary Encyclopedia entry on Iola Leroy