A cultural history of the work of nineteenth-century black women writers, this volume traces the emergence of the novel as a forum for political and cultural reconstruction, examining the ways in which dominant sexual ideologies influenced the literary conventions of women's fiction, and reassessing the uses of fiction in American culture. Carby revises the history of the period of Jim Crow and Booker T. Washington, depicting a time of intense cultural and political activity by such black women writers as Ida B. Wells, Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Pauline Hopkins.