By Taylor Jasmine | On November 26, 2018 | Updated December 20, 2025 | Comments (0)
“The Two Offers” by Frances Watkins Harper (1825 – 1922; also known as Frances E.W. Harper and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) is believed to be the first published short story by an African American writer.
It first appeared in the June and July 1859 issues of the Anglo-African Magazine, a publication based in New York that featured the writings of black authors.
Written in the sentimental, somewhat stilted style of the era, the story is an example of “reform literature,” steeped in the values of Christianity, morality, and domesticity. It’s set in an era in which women of any class or race were basically the property of their fathers and husbands, were they not owned in the bonds of slavery. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On October 26, 2018 | Updated May 2, 2020 | Comments (0)
One of Gertrude Stein’s earliest published works, Tender Buttons (1914) is this delightfully perplexing author’s attempt to “create a relationship between the word and the things seen.”
Especially in the first years since its publication, critics have been divided between praising Tender Buttons as a masterwork of of experimental cubist literature, or trashing it as pure nonsense.
Contemporary interpretations tend to find it praiseworthy. Whatever camp you find yourself in, it’s hard to dismiss the fact that this slim volume of prose poetry is entertaining, if more than occasionally head-scratching. You can read two original reviews from the time of its 1914 publication here. Read More→
By Jordan St. Clair-Jackson | On October 9, 2018 | Updated May 5, 2026 | Comments (0)
“Désirée’s Baby” is an 1893 short story by Kate Chopin. The bold and unconventional American author best know for the classic novella The Awakening explores the hypocrisy, racism, and sexism in upper crust Creole Louisiana.
First published in the January 1893 issue of Vogue magazine as “The Father of Désirée’s Baby,” it was included in Bayou Folk, a short story collection by Chopin published the following year.
In this fairly brief short story, Chopin wove in the themes that would come to define her works, including women’s struggle for equality, suppressed emotion, and the vagaries of identity.
Abandoned as a baby, Désirée is the adopted daughter of Monsieur and Madame Valmondé, wealthy French Creoles. When she reaches young womanhood she marries Armand, the son of another wealthy French Creole family. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On September 3, 2018 | Updated June 15, 2026 | Comments (0)
Bliss (1918) is a short story by Katherine Mansfield (1888 – 1923), the New Zealand-born British author recognized for revolutionizing the modern English short story form. This story is one of the works that put Mansfield on the literary map as a master of the genre.
Bertha Young, the main character, is a happy yet somewhat naïve young wife. The story takes place during a dinner party she hosts with her husband Harry.
One of the story’s themes is the classic one self-knowledge. But it was more of a rarity to explore queer themes in early twentieth-century literature. Mansfield herself was bisexual, and perhaps that was subtly alluded to with the character of Pearl Fulton, a guest to whom Bertha is drawn. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On February 15, 2018 | Updated December 13, 2020 | Comments (0)
Transcendental Wild Oats by Louisa May Alcott is a satire, somewhere in length between a short story and novella, about her family’s misadventures as part of the Fruitlands community in the 1840s. It was first published in a New York newspaper in 1873.
Alcott thinly disguised the members of the Transcendentalist community. Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott was a co-founder of the community. In the fictional version he became “Abel Lamb.” Her mother, Abigail May Alcott, is presented as “Sister Hope.”
Louisa makes no attempt to soften the truth in her satire, portraying Abel Lamb is an impractical dreamer; Sister Hope actually feels hopeless —overworked and frustrated by the hapless men. Read More→
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