Eloise Bibb Thompson — Poems and Later Recoveries

29 June 1878, New Orleans, Louisiana – 8 January 1928, New York, New York

Eloise Bibb Thompson entered print at seventeen with a book that placed biblical legend, classical antiquity, Shakespearean history, romantic narrative, Frederick Douglass, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin beside the Black women’s clubs and newspapers sustaining her career. The long tales in Poems travel through Venice, Rome, Syria, Egypt, England, and colonial Virginia; shorter works honor Douglass, journalist Louis A. Martinet, editor George L. Knox, club founder Sylvanie F. Williams, and Bibb’s childhood friend Alice Dunbar-Nelson. She later moved to Los Angeles, wrote journalism, answered The Birth of a Nation with a screenplay sold to Thomas Ince, and became an important Black woman dramatist. Poems and Later Recoveries restores the complete 1895 collection with two additional poems, allowing the ambitious young poet to stand beside the playwright, social worker, and cultural organizer she became.

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Catalogue

Black Los Angeles Literary Culture

Associations

Black Los Angeles Institutions

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Bibliography

Bibb, Eloise A. Poems. Monthly Review Press, 1895. 107 pp.; twenty-six poems.

Thompson, Eloise Bibb. “The Negro Woman in America.” California Eagle, 1914.

Bibb, Eloise A. A Reply to the Clansman [also In Response to the Clansman]. Screenplay and stage version, 1915; sold to Thomas H. Ince, later repurchased; text not located.

———. “A Garland of Prayer.” The Negro Trail Blazers of California, by Delilah L. Beasley. Los Angeles, 1919, p. 267.

———. Caught. Play, produced at the Gamut Club, Los Angeles, 1920; text not located.

———. A Friend of Democracy. Play, 1920; proposed as libretto material; text not located.

———. Africanus [also Africans or Africannus]. Two-act play, produced in Los Angeles, 1922; text not located.

———. “After Reading Bryant’s ‘Lines to a Waterfowl.’” Negro Poets and Their Poems, by Robert T. Kerlin, Associated Publishers, 1923, p. 212.

———. Cooped Up. One-act play produced by the National Ethiopian Art Theatre at the Lafayette Theatre, 1924–25; text not located.

———. “Mademoiselle ’Tasie—A Story.” 1925. Publication details require verification.

———. “Masks: A Story.” Opportunity, 1927. Reprinted in The Sleeper Wakes and later anthologies.

———. “The Church and the Negro.” Tidings, date unresolved.

Works About the Author

Beasley, Delilah L. The Negro Trail Blazers of California. 1919, pp. 130, 253–54, 267.

Sherman, Joan R. “Eloise Bibb Thompson, 1878–1927.” Invisible Poets: Afro-Americans of the Nineteenth Century. Reissued Berkshire, 2023, pp. 285–88.

“Lost Voices in Black History: Eloise Bibb Thompson.” Mint Theater Company. Detailed modern theater biography with contemporary sources.

“An Honor to Womankind: Eloise Bibb Thompson.” CreoleGen, 23 May 2014.

Academy of American Poets. “Eloise Bibb Thompson.”.

Jane Addams Digital Edition. “Thompson, Eloise Bibb.” Includes a 1914 Chicago Defender photograph and settlement-work profile.

“A Playwright.” Opportunity, vol. 3, Feb. 1925, pp. 63–64.

“The Looking Glass.” The Crisis, vol. 23, no. 6, Apr. 1922, p. 275. Contemporary review of Africanus.

Peterson, Bernard L. Early Black American Playwrights and Dramatic Writers. Greenwood, 1990, pp. 181–82.

Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph, editors. Harlem’s Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900–1950. Harvard University Press, 1996, pp. 530–31.

Sherman, Joan R., editor. Collected Black Women’s Poetry. Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers. Oxford University Press, 1988.

“Eloise Bibb Thompson, Playwright, Author, Dead After Long Illness.” New York Age, 14 Jan. 1928, p. 10.

“Complete digital text of Poems.” Open transcription and author-page links from the African American Poetry Digital Anthology.

“NYPL digital edition.” Public PDF of the 1895 book.

“Du Bois Papers letter.” 1922 letter from Eloise and Noah Thompson to W. E. B. Du Bois.

“Academy text of ‘Ode to the Sun’.” Public-domain poem and modern editorial note.

“National Ethiopian Art Theatre context.” Anthology and performance-network discovery route.