psuedonym: Sarah A. Allen

1859-1930

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Pauline Hopkins was born in 1859, in Portland Maine, to Northrup and Sarah Allen Hopkins. Because record-keeping was not "official" in those days, the exact date of birth is currently unknown. She died quite tragically on August 13, 1930, in Boston, MA. when bandages she was wearing, which were soaked "in linament" caught fire.

Hopkins wrote extensively in a number of genres, including drama, fiction, and non-fiction. Her nationalistic feminism which also explores issues of romance and family anticipates later writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker. Much of her work explores political ideas: sexual exploitation of black women; freedom; escape; lynching; Jim Crow; "passing;" voting; and black self-reliance; at the same time she is also quite interested in exploring issues of ideal female beauty, orphans, motherhood, same sex relationships, and classical Greek mythology. Like many writers of the time period, she expressed:

her outrage at the victimization of women, and her message is that black women must resist such victimization whenever possible. A reverence for motherhood also informs her romance, and she celebrates the union of families splintered by slavery and underscores the need for the black extended family to value itself. (DLB, 182-189.)

In 1874, early on in her writing career, she won the ten dollar First Prize in the Congregational Publishing Society of Boston essay contest for her essay on the Evils of Intemperance and Their Remedies. This contest was sponsored by William Wells Brown, a respected author and anti-slavery activist. Like many women writers of her time period, Hopkins supplemented her writing career with other work-- she was a stenographer for the Bureau of Statistics, and spent some time working on the Massachusetts Census. She was a singer, spending some time touring professionally and she was also a public lecturer.

In the past, her work has largely been critically neglected, perhaps because of the contempt later writers had for domestic themes, perhaps because of her romanticization of the tragic mulatress figure in her novels. However, there seems to be a growing awareness of her work, and several books are now in print and/or on their way about her work. Scholars seem quite interested in reviving her reputation, and she appears on the web on numerous syllabi for college courses-- the first sign of a surging popularity.

Of Contending Forces, Hopkins' most famous work, The Dictionary of Literary Biography argues:

[It] abounds with trappings of domestic fiction; imperiled heroines, concupiscent villains, and tragic misunderstandings are juxtaposed to serene domestic scenes symbolizing cosmic harmony. [. . .] the central heroine is predictably beautiful, but her attractiveness suggests the sexual victimization black women have experienced in racist society; [. . .] Hopkins infuses the cult of domesticity with political messages, so that seemingly innocuous gatherings of women proclaim the significance of the black women's club movement, and joyous reunions among kin exemplify the vibrancy of the Afro-American family. Compared with other writers of her day, Hopkins is quite a skillful author, managing an adroit fusion of women's romance and black historical concerns.

Many of her longer works were published serially in the magazine Colored American, for which she published extensively (click here for a long essay discussing her editorship), serving both on general staff and in editorships. She sometimes used a pseudonym while writing for the magazine. Protracted illness forced her to leave the magazine, but she did keep writing.

Her papers are in the Fisk University Library in Nashville, Tennessee.