Sarah Hopkins Bradford

Sarah Hopkins Bradford (August 20, 1818 – June 25, 1912) was an American writer and historian, best known today for her two pioneering biographical books on Harriet Tubman.

Rather than a formal series involving connected characters, these six books are each collections of poetry and prose, including many short stories.

In 1869, four years after the end of the Civil War, Bradford wrote her first of two groundbreaking books, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman.

Bradford was one of the first Caucasian writers to deal with African-American topics, and her work attracted worldwide fame, selling very well.

She was a contemporary of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose breakthrough novel Uncle Tom's Cabin also featured African-American themes, but appeared some 20 years before Bradford's first Tubman biography.

Her Tubman books, which received some criticism based on lack of thoroughness in historical methods, remain popular, and have been issued in some twenty editions, as of 2012.