Author: Sarah E. Farro

Sarah E. Farro (1859-c. 1937) was an African American novelist. Born to parents who moved from the south the Chicago, Farro was raised alongside two younger sisters and was listed on the 1880 census as “black.” Not much is known about her life, but she was the first African American woman—and the fourth African American—to publish a novel in the nineteenth century. True Love: A Story of English Domestic Life (1891), her only novel, was published by Chicago’s Donohue & Henneberry and was exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in the city in 1893. Praised at a celebration of pioneering black Americans in 1937, Farro has largely been forgotten by readers and the public at large. Recently, however, scholars have sought to recognize her outstanding literary achievement.