Covering a wide range of topics from slavery and abolition to love and death, this collection provides a unique portrait of early America through the reflections of African-American poets during the 18th and 19th centuries. It contains a rich variety of poetic styles and types including elegies, odes, ditties, hymns, and sonnets.
The bibliographic source for the Database of African-American Poetry is the invaluable Afro-American Poetry and Drama, 1760-1975, by W. P. French et al.
NOTE: Four authors included in French for the period covered in the Database of African-American Poetry are not included in the Database. These authors are Francis A. Boyd, A.J. Jackson, Benjamin Tucker Tanner, and Joseph Thomas Wilson. In addition, other African-American authors from the early twentieth century are included in the American Verse collection. --HTI Staff
The general policy has been to use first editions whenever possible; later editions were selected if they were more inclusive. Where poems appeared in their original dialect in an earlier edition and standardized in a later edition, both forms have been included for comparison purposes. Poems originally published in periodicals have also been included.
Textual apparatus and front matter to the poems are generally omitted, except the poet's own notes, which are included in the database.