The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers series, under the general editorship of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has rescued the voice of an entire segment of the African-American literary tradition by offering volumes of compelling and rare works of fiction, poetry, autobiography, biography, essays, and journalism, written by nineteenth-century black women.
The Hazely Family is somewhat typical of the "angel of the home" romances written by American women during the latter half of the nineteenth-century--except that the author is a black woman. The book is based on the belief that "a happy home is the acme of human it is bliss," and that women are central to the achievement of that acme. It is the moral fiber of Flora Hazely, the central character, that keeps her family together--a constant concern in Afro-American literature and life.
