Carolivia Herron

Selected Works

of Angelina Weld Grimké

carolivia@carolivia.org

Dr. Carolivia Herron edited the papers of Angelina Weld Grimké and published the Selected Works of Angelina Weld Grimké with Oxford University Press in 1991. The volume is one of the 40 books in the Schomburg Collection of Nineteenth Century Black Women Writers, edited by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Skip Gates).

Angelina Weld Grimké was a prolific poet and playwright whose major works were written between 1905 and 1920. She was a feminist who supported the birth control movement and was probably a closeted lesbian as well. She gave up writing early in her life - and spent her last 38 years in solitude. Here is one of her poems:

Epitaph on a Living Woman

There were tiny flames in her eyes,

Her mouth was a flame,

And her flesh . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now she is ashes