
The Reconstruction Diary of Frances Anne Rollin: A Critical Edition
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781469690018
Publication Date: 11/18/2025
Edition Description: Critical ed.
In 1867, Frances Anne Rollin, a Black writer and teacher from South Carolina, traveled to Boston to seek a publisher for her biography of famed Black abolitionist, writer, and Civil War veteran Martin R. Delany—the first fulllength biography written by an African American. Beginning in January 1868, Rollin kept a diary while in Boston documenting her progression on Delany’s biography, negotiations with publishers, visits from friends, attendance at lectures and readings, and her marriage to William J. Whipper, a Black politician and jurist. Rollin’s diary is one of the earliest known diaries by a Southern Black woman.
In this critical edition Jennifer Putzi offers the first complete transcription and annotation of Rollin’s diary, along with a robust introduction providing important biographical, historical, cultural, and literary contexts for readers. Rollin’s diary provides one of the fullest pictures of an African American woman as an author, activist, and wellconnected and politically involved individual during the Reconstruction era—filling a gap in the literature and scholarly analysis of such preserved works by nineteenthcentury African American women.
In this critical edition Jennifer Putzi offers the first complete transcription and annotation of Rollin’s diary, along with a robust introduction providing important biographical, historical, cultural, and literary contexts for readers. Rollin’s diary provides one of the fullest pictures of an African American woman as an author, activist, and wellconnected and politically involved individual during the Reconstruction era—filling a gap in the literature and scholarly analysis of such preserved works by nineteenthcentury African American women.
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