Full Description
Hagar's Daughter is Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins's first serial novel, published in the Boston-based Colored American Magazine (1901-1902). The novel itself features concealed and mistaken identities, dramatic revelations, and extraordinary plot twists. In Part 1, Maryland plantation heirs Hagar Sargeant and Ellis Enson fall in love, marry, and have a daughter. However, Ellis's covetous younger brother, St. Clair, claims that Hagar is of mixed-race ancestry, putting her and her infant in peril. When Ellis is presumed to be dead, St. Clair sells Hagar and her child into slavery, and they presumably die when Hagar, in despair, leaps into the Potomac River with her daughter. This is the backdrop for Part 2 (set twenty years later), which includes a high-profile murder trial, an abduction plot, and a steady succession of surprises as the young Black maid Venus Johnson assumes male clothing to solve a series of mysteries that are both current and decades-old. The appendices to this Broadview edition feature advertising for the original publication, other writing by Hopkins and her contemporaries, and reviews that situate the work within the popular literature and political culture of its time.
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
Hagar's Daughter. A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice
Appendix A: Hagar's Daughter Synopsis in the Colored American Magazine (1902)
Appendix B: Promoting Hagar's Daughter
1. Cover of the Colored American Magazine (March 1901)
2. Advertisement for Contending Forces, Colored American Magazine (March 1902)
3. Subscription Advertisement for Colored American Magazine (March 1902)
4. From "Editorial and Publishers' Announcements," Colored American Magazine (March 1902)
Appendix C: Race/History
1. From Pauline E. Hopkins, "Hon. Frederick Douglass," Colored American Magazine (December 1900)
2. John Greenleaf Whittier, "Moloch in State Street" (1851)
3. From "Gen. Robert Smalls," National Republican (6 March 1886)
4. From Pauline E. Hopkins, "Munroe Rogers," Colored American Magazine (November 1902)
Appendix D: The Figure of Hagar
1. Genesis 16 and 21
2. From Pauline E. Hopkins, "Artists," Famous Women of the Negro Race, X, Colored American Magazine (September 1902)
3. Eliza Poitevent Nicholson, "Hagar," The Cosmopolitan (November 1893)
Appendix E: Popular Genres and Literary Experimentation
1. From Pauline E. Hopkins, Peculiar Sam (1879)
2. Pauline E. Hopkins, "Talma Gordon," Colored American Magazine (October 1900)
3. Pauline E. Hopkins, "A Dash for Liberty," Colored American Magazine (August 1901)
Appendix F: Gender
1. From Pauline E. Hopkins, "Phenomenal Vocalists," Famous Women of the Negro Race, I, Colored American Magazine (November 1901)
2. From J. Shirley Shadrach, "Furnace Blasts. II. Black or White—Which Should Be the Young Afro-American's Choice in Marriage," Colored American Magazine (March 1903)
3. From Pauline E. Hopkins to W[illiam] M[onroe] Trotter (16 April 1905)
Appendix G: Borrowings/Plagiarism/Signifying
1. Illustration from Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
2. From William Wells Brown, Clotel; or, The President's Daughter, Chapter 2 and Chapter 25 (1853)
3. Fanny Driscoll, "Two Women," Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly (May 1884)
Appendix H: Contemporary Responses to Hagar's Daughter
1. "The Colored Magazine," Weekly Economist (15 March 1901)
2. From "Editorial and Publishers' Announcements," Colored American Magazine (March 1903)
Works Cited and Select Bibliography
