"Literature: From 1865, a black woman's love story"

NEW YORK: Literature

"It reads like a typical Victorian melodrama: an impoverished young woman, "strangely, wildly and darkly beautiful," becomes a governess in a wealthy household, and, behold, a French count falls for her and wants to sweep her away.
But there are crucial differences: It is set in race-torn America; the heroine is mulatto; and, the book, "The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride," is believed by some scholars to be the first novel ever published by an African-American woman.
Julia C. Collins, a free black woman who lived in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, serialized "The Curse of Caste" in 1865 in The Christian Recorder, the newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. This month it is being published for the first time in book form by Oxford University Press." Link