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1882-1961
Jessie Fauset, essayist, editor, and novelist, displayed in her work the complexities of life for literary artists during the Harlem Renaissanceand the Great Depression. Her career as a teacher provided the stability of income and permanence that allowed her to write her novels and essays.
As a college student at Cornell University, Fauset had started corresponding with W.E.B. Du Bois, editor of the NAACP's journal The Crisis, and later submitted articles to the journal. After completing her master's degree in French in 1920, she was invited to become The Crisis's literary editor, holding the job until 1923 and afterward becoming the managing editor. As both a foster mother to and a product of the Harlem Renaissance, Fauset wrote more novels than any other black writer from 1924 to 1933. The black characters in her novels reflect the "Talented Tenth" and her own experiences with the hard-working, self-respecting black middle class. Fauset left The Crisis in 1927 to achieve a more ordered life as a French teacher at De Witt Clinton High School. She continued to teach in New York until 1944 and later taught as a visiting professor in the English Department at Hampton Institute.
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