An Unpublished Tale about African American Poetry: Alice Dunbar-Nelson's "The Grievances of the Books" (1897).

The article critiques an 1897 unpublished book about African American poetry "The Grievances of the Books" by Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Topics include the citation of several antebellum verses in the unfinished work, why critics considered it as an unassuming document, the significance of the work to author Elizabeth McHenry's call for print culture studies to expand further to include those components of African American literary history and the inclusion in the book of forgotten antislavery poems.