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Biography

Nella Larsen went by various names throughout her life. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 13, 1891 as Nellie Walker. She was the daughter of Danish immigrant Marie Hanson and Peter Walker, a West Indian man of color from Saint Croix who soon disappeared from her life. Her mother was a domestic case worker.^[1][2]. Taking the surname of her Scandinavian stepfather Peter Larsen,^[1] Walker also at times went by Nellye Larson, Nellie Larsen and, finally, Nella Larsen.^[3] When she married, she sometimes used her married name Nella Larsen Imes.^[4]

As a child, Larsen lived several years with her mother's relations in Denmark. In 1907-08, she briefly attended Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee, a historically Black University. George Hutchinson speculates that she was expelled for some violation of Fisk's very strict dress or conduct codes; she then spent four years in Denmark, before returning to the U.S.^[5]

In 1914, Larsen enrolled in the all-black nursing school at New York City's Lincoln Hospital. Upon graduating in 1915, she went South to work at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, where she became head nurse at a hospital and training school. While in Tuskegee, she came in contact with Booker T. Washington's model of education and became disillusioned with it. (Washington died shortly after Larsen arrived in Tuskegee.) Working conditions for nurses were poor; their duties included doing hospital laundry. Larsen lasted only until 1916, when she returned to New York to work again as a nurse. After working as a nurse through the Spanish flu pandemic, she left nursing and became a librarian.^[4]

In 1919, Larsen married Elmer Samuel Imes, a prominent physicist, the second African American to receive a Ph.D in physics. They moved to Harlem, where Larsen took a job at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL).^[4] In the year after her marriage, she began to write and published her first pieces in 1920.

Certified in 1923 by the NYPL's library school, she transferred to a children's librarian's position in Manhattan's Lower East Side. In 1926, having made friends with important figures in the Negro Awakening that became the Harlem Renaissance, Larsen gave up her work as a librarian and began to work as a writer active in the literary community.^[4] In 1928, she published Quicksand (ISBN 0-14-118127-3), a largely autobiographical novel, which received significant critical acclaim, if not great financial success.

In 1929, she published Passing (ISBN 0-14-243727-1), her second novel, which was also critically successful.

In 1930, Larsen published "Sanctuary" [1], a short story for which she was accused of plagiarism. Her marriage was in trouble during this period.

"Sanctuary" resembled Sheila Kaye-Smith’s short story "Mrs. Adis", first published in the United Kingdom in 1919. Kaye-Smith was an English writer, mainly on rural themes, and very popular in the US. "Sanctuary"’s basic plot, and a little of the descriptions and dialogue are virtually identical. Compared to Kaye-Smith’s tale, "Sanctuary" is '... longer, better written and more explicitly political, specifically around issues of race, rather than class' as in "Mrs Adis" [Pearce 2003]. Larsen reworked and updated the tale into a modern American black context. Pearce also mentions that much later Sheila Kaye-Smith herself wrote in All the Books of My Life (Cassell, London, 1956) that she had in fact based "Mrs Adis" on an old story by St Francis de Sales. It is unknown whether she ever knew of the Larsen controversy.

Despite the accusations of plagiarism, which turned out to be false, Larsen received a Guggenheim Fellowship. She used it to travel to Europe for several years, spending time in Mallorca and Paris, and worked on a novel about a love triangle. The three protagonists were all white; the book was never published.^[6]

Larsen returned to New York in 1933 after her divorce was complete. She lived on alimony until her ex-husband's death in 1942. She was not writing (and never would again), was apparently depressed, and may have been using drugs. After her ex-husband's death, Larsen returned to nursing and disappeared from the literary circles with which she had previously travelled. She lived on the Lower East Side, and did not venture to Harlem.^[6] Many of her old acquaintances speculated incorrectly that she, like some of her characters, had crossed the color line and disappeared. However, George Hutchinson's recent biography of Larsen demonstrated that she remained in New York, working as a nurse, and avoiding contact with her earlier friends and world.