African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. The collection includes works by such prominent masters of American literature as Frederick Douglass, Nella Larsen, Charles W. Chesnutt , Paul Laurence Dunbar, Phillis Wheatley, Langston Hughes, Booker T. Washington , W. E. B. Du Bois and many others. Contents: Novels and short stories Frederick Douglass THE HEROIC SLAVE Nella Larsen QUICKSAND PASSING THE WRONG MAN FREEDOM SANCTUARY Alice Dunbar-Nelson A CARNIVAL JANGLE VIOLETS THE WOMAN TEN MINUTES' MUSING TITEE Charles W. Chesnutt THE GOOPHERED GRAPEVINE PO' SANDY SIS' BECKY'S PICKANINNY THE DOLL THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH Paul Laurence Dunbar THE SCAPEGOAT Jean Toomer BECKY Poetry Phillis Wheatley TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF DARTMOUTH ON VIRTUE AN HYMN TO THE MORNING AN HYMN TO THE EVENING Frances E. W. Harper BURY ME IN A FREE LAND SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE MY MOTHER'S KISS A GRAIN OF SAND OUR HERO THE SPARROW'S FALL James Weldon Johnson SENCE YOU WENT AWAY Paul Laurence Dunbar THE LESSON SYMPATHY WE WEAR THE MASK Claude McKay AFTER THE WINTER IF WE MUST DIE THE TROPICS IN NEW YORK Countee Cullen FOR PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR INCIDENT LANGSTON HUGHES THE WEARY BLUES JAZZONIA NEGRO DANCERS THE CAT AND THE SAXOPHONE (2 A. M.) YOUNG SINGER CABARET TO MIDNIGHT NAN AT LEROY'S TO A LITTLE LOVER-LASS, DEAD HARLEM NIGHT CLUB NUDE YOUNG DANCER YOUNG PROSTITUTE TO A BLACK DANCER IN "THE LITTLE SAVOY" SONG FOR A BANJO DANCE BLUES FANTASY LENOX AVENUE: MIDNIGHT Non-fiction Frederick Douglass NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS Harriet Jacobs INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL Booker T. Washington UP FROM SLAVERY William Still UNDERGROUND RAILROAD Henry Box Brown James Hambleton Christian Theophilus Collins Seth Concklin William and Ellen Craft Abram Galloway and Richard Eden Charles Gilbert Samuel Green Jamie Griffin Harry Grimes James Hamlet and Others John Henry Hill Ann Maria Jackson and Her Seven Children Jane Johnson Matilda Mahoney Mary Frances Melvin Aunt Hannah Moore Alfred S. Thornton Essays W. E. B. Du Bois THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK Charles W. Chesnutt THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NEGRO Paul Laurence Dunbar REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN NEGROES