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The Short Fiction of Nella Larsen

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About this book

Before the two novels that made her name, Nella Larsen published a handful of short stories in magazines, several under the pen name Allen Semi. This collection gathers that early work, from the slight romantic sketches "The Wrong Man" and "Freedom" to "Sanctuary," a tense tale of loyalty and guilt on the Southern coast that drew a public charge of plagiarism and helped drive Larsen away from writing for good. Read together, the stories show a writer testing the themes of race, class, and moral pressure that would define Quicksand and Passing. They form a compact portrait of one of the Harlem Renaissance's most elusive talents. This free PDF and EPUB edition collects her short fiction in a single volume.

About the author

Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen (1891-1964) was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the first African-American women to win serious critical attention as a novelist. Trained as a nurse and librarian, she wrote only two novels, Quicksand and Passing, both probing race, class, and identity with rare candor.