Her mother died three years later and she was looked after by relatives. She was educated at a school run by her uncle which was Waco High , Rev.
William Watkins until the age of thirteen when she found work as a seamstress.
Her first volume of verse,
Forest Leaves, was published in
1845, the book was extremely popular and over the next few years went through 20 editions.
In
1850, she started working in
Columbus, Ohio as a schoolteacher. Three years later in
1853, she joined the
American Anti-Slavery Society and became a travelling lecturer for the group. She was also a strong supporter of
prohibition and
woman's suffrage. She often would read her poetry at these public meetings, including the extremely popular
Bury Me in a Free Land.
Harper served as Superintendent of Colored Work in the
Women's Christian Temperance Union, and fought against the idea that alcohol abuse was a problem particular to African American men. (
The Gilded Age, p. 114)
In
1892, she published a
novel about a rescued black
slave and the Reconstructed South, called
Iola Leroy, one of the first books published by an
African American. Later, she also wrote
Minnie's Sacrifice,
Sowing and Reaping and
Trial and Triumph.
Harper was a strong supporter of
women's suffrage and was a member of the
American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).
Frances Harper died on 20 February 1911.
Cordery, Stacey in The Gilded Age, Charles Calhoun, ed. Wilimgton, Delaware, Scholarly Resources, 1996, ISBN 0-8420-2500-6
Shockley, Ann Allen, Afro-American Women Writers 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide, New Haven, Connecticut: Meridian Books, 1989. ISBN 0-452-00981-2
Maryemma Graham, ed., The Complete Poems of Frances E. W. Harper, 1988.
Frances Smith Foster, ed., A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader, 1990.
Melba Joyce Boyd, Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825–1911, 1994.
Frances Smith Foster, ed., Minnie's Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping, Trial and Triumph: Three Rediscovered Novels by Frances E. W. Harper, 1994.
John Ernest, Resistance and Reformation in Nineteenth-Century African-American Literature, 1995
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