Fiction, Essays and Poetry

Originally published in London in 1857, The Garies and Their Friends is the first novel to chronicle the experience of free blacks in the pre-Civil War Northeast. The novel anticipates themes that were to become important in later African American fiction, including miscegenation and "passing," and tells the story of the Garies and their friends the Ellises, a "highly respectable and industrious colored family."

In addition to this new edition of The Garies, we are pleased to include new material by Webb, never before published in book form. These include the stories Marvin Hayle and Two Wolves and a Lamb, essays and a number of poems, together with photographs presumed to be the writer and his wife, the actress Mary Webb.