Violets

Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Poems in "Violets" (1895)

The title story, “Violets,” is about a young woman in love for the first time. The woman presents her suitor with a bouquet of violets and a lock of her hair.

Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar Nelson (July 19, 1875 – September 18, 1935) was an American poet, journalist and political activist. Among the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. Her first husband was the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar; she then married physician Henry A. Callis; and last married Robert J. Nelson, a poet and civil rights activist.

Poetry, Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, African American literature