Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins

Who was Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins?

Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins was an American writer, and author of the novel Four Girls At Cottage City. An earlier novel, Megda was published under her maiden name of Emma Dunham Kelley and the pseudonym "Forget-me-not."

The author was long considered a pioneer of African-American women's literature. Her novel was rediscovered by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and served as an inspiration for him to compile the 40-volume Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers in 1988. While many African American writers dealt explicitly with issues of race, Kelley-Hawkins' work did not treat themes of racial uplift. This treatment is similar to fiction by other Black-authors of the period, including selected work by Frances Harper, Frank Webb, Paul L. Dunbar and Amelia E. Johnson, for example. Kelley-Hawkins did, however, deal with African-American reform issues.

Recent genealogical research indicates that Kelley-Hawkins was in fact white or identified herself as white.