The Work of the Afro-American Woman.
The Chief Significance Of This Work Is That It Preserves
For All Time A Chapter Of Humanity
[Abolition] Mossell, Mrs. N.F. The Work of the Afro-American Woman. Philadelphia: Geo. S. Ferguson Company, 1894.
12 mo.; frontispiece photographic portrait of Afro-American woman with two children, a boy and a girl; floral endpapers; front hinge quite tender; 4 pages of advertisements bound in at rear, including one for the American Baptist Publication Society and another one for The A.M.E. Church Review, “Leading Literary Publication of the Colored Race.”; brown cloth, stamped in black; covers lightly used, tip edges faintly waterstained. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition. An early miscellany, containing both poetry and prose, all written by Mrs. Mossell of Philadelphia. The book’s aim – quoted in the header title above from a sentence printed on the page facing the table of contents – seems to be to encourage the reader to see negroes as people and to take seriously the literary and historical contributions of blacks.
The book commences with 8 essays, all of which are intriguing: “The Work of the Afro-American Woman;” “A Sketch of the Afro-American in Literature;” “The Afro-American Woman in Verse;” Our Women in Journalism;” “Our Afro-American Representatives at the World’s Fair;” “The Opposite Point of View;” “A Lofty Study;” and “Caste in Universities.” These are followed by approximately 40 pages of verse on political and personal subjects.
A handsome copy of an early work arguing for the humanity – and by extension, the rights, of the Afro-American woman. It’s author, Mrs. Mossett, does not look up in any of the standard resources, suggesting that the printing was a small one and that the book is therefore uncommon. We have never seen another copy – or that of anything else by the author – on the marketplace.
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