The Magazine Novels of Pauline Hopkins by Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins

Peculiar Sam, or the Underground Railroad, Alexander Street Press* ( Link) Resources other writing by HOPKINS Wayne State University Press, 1991 ( Link) Publication Info: The Roots of African American Drama : an anthology of early plays, 1858-1938. Eventually, it was given the title Peculiar Sam, or the Underground Railroad.Ĭharacters: Sam, Jim, Caesar, Pete, Pomp, Virginia, Juno, Mammy The play was later presented by the Hopkins Colored Troubadours (with the playwright in the role of Virginia) under a few different titles, including The Slaves Escape and The Flight to Freedom. Sprague in the spring of 1879 with the following company: Joined by family and friends, and pursued by Jim, Sam and Virginia make their way from bondage in Mississippi to freedom in Canada.Ĭommissioned as a vehicle for then-famous minstrel and comedic performer, Sam Lucas, The Underground Railroad began touring under the management of Z.W. The news – and Virginia’s determination to flee rather than face that fate – prompts Sam to form an escape plan. Billed as a “moral and musical drama,” the play opens on a Mississippi plantation, where Sam learns that his beloved, Virginia, is being forced to marry Negro overseer Jim.

Peculiar Sam, or the Underground Railroad is the earliest extant play written by an African American woman. ( Full bio) Plays PECULIAR SAM, OR THE uNDERGROUND RAILROAD (1879) While the bulk of Hopkins’s reputation rests on her output during a four-year period when she was in her forties, she wrote a musical play Slaves’ Escape or, The Underground Railroad (later revised as Peculiar Sam or, The Underground Railroad) that was produced in 1879 when she was twenty years old. Through her editorial work, fiction, and a substantial body of nonfiction that addressed black history, racial discrimination, economic justice, and women’s role in society among other topics, she emerged as one of the era’s preeminent public intellectuals. During this time period, Hopkins worked as an editor at the magazine. All three serials along with several short stories by Hopkins appeared in The Colored American Magazine, a literary journal which became the Colored Co-operative Publishing Company’s primary project. Hopkins followed this first novel with three serialized novels – Hagar’s Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice, Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest, and Of One Blood Or, The Hidden Self. Her best-known work, the novel Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South, was published in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1900 by the Colored Co-operative Publishing Company. Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, who was born in Portland, Maine, in 1859, is best known for four novels and numerous short stories which she published between 19.

The Magazine Novels of Pauline Hopkins by Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins