The importance of local black newspapers and periodicals as repositories of black creative writing is only now being fully recognised. It is as if a hermetically sealed library of Afro-American literature has been rediscovered after a century of neglect.

Black Literature brings together for the first time novels, short stories, poems and reviews scattered throughout 110 scarce black periodicals and newspapers giving students and scholars alike a unique opportunity to understand this vast body of American literature.

1827, the starting date, was the year when Freedom's Journal, the first black periodical was published. It seems that black authors, denied publication by mainstream American institutions, turned to their own local neighbourhood newspapers and magazines to give voice to their literary concerns.

Many of these authors have been identified by the Black Periodical Fiction Project research team. While some were middle class, others were labourers or domestics who would come home after a long day's work and sit down to write a novel or short story or poem. Large numbers of the writers were women who often discuss sexual exploitation and the fact that black women had even less freedom than black men.

Black Literature not only expands vastly the black literary tradition, this fascinating collection, full of vitality and imagination, is of immense social and historical significance in understanding the Afro-American experience in the 19th and 20th centuries.

A free online index to the Black Literature collection is available at www.blackliteratureindex.com