Harriet E. Adams Wilson is the first African American woman known to have published a novel in English, a fact not acknowledged until the republication in 1983 of her 1859 autobiographical work. Novelist Alice Walker remarked, "I sat up most of the night reading and pondering the enormous significance of Harriet Wilson's novel Our Nig. It is as if we'd just discovered Phillis Wheatley--or Langston Hughes." Wilson's Our Nig is significant not only because of its status as a first but also because of its unconventional treatment of racism in the North at a time when most attention to racial inequity was directed toward Southern slavery.

Although Our Nig had been recognized by booksellers since its initial publication, it had not been noted that Mrs. H. E. Wilson, listed as the copyright holder, was an African American. The only evidence available about the author's race was the plot of the...