Books by Nella Larsen in PDF or EPUB

Nella Larsen was a key novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. Born to a Danish mother and an Afro-Caribbean father from the Danish West Indies, she spent her childhood in Chicago and Copenhagen.

Experiencing the tensions of race and belonging first-hand, these themes would run through her work. After studying briefly at Fisk University, she trained as a nurse in 1915 and later worked as a librarian at the New York Public Library.

Notably, she was the first African-American woman to graduate from its library science school. In 1919, she married the physicist Elmer Samuel Imes.

Between 1928 and 1929, she published her two seminal novels, Quicksand and Passing, as well as short stories such as Sanctuary, establishing her as a pioneering voice in the exploration of racial identity, passing, gender, and class. In 1930, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, becoming the first African-American woman to receive one, and travelled to Europe.

Following a high-profile divorce and literary controversy, she withdrew from the literary scene, returning to nursing and living quietly in Brooklyn. Rediscovered by critics in the 1980s, she is now recognised as one of the most important authors of 20th-century African-American literature.