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Frank J. Webb (1828—1894) was an African-American novelist, poet, and essayist. His only published novel, The Garies and Their Friends (1857), was the second novel to be published by an African American.

Born in Philadelphia on March 21, 1828, Webb was an active part of the city’s community of free African Americans by the time he married in 1845. His wife, Mary, gained renown for her dramatic readings of works by Shakespeare, Sheridan, and Longfellow, attracting the attention of Harriet Beecher Stowe and other prominent literary abolitionists. Stowe was so impressed by Mary’s readings that she adapted scenes from Uncle Tom’s Cabin expressly for her performance and helped to arrange a transatlantic tour. With letters of introduction from Stowe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the Webbs traveled to England in 1856, where Mary’s dramatic readings garnered further acclaim. The couple received a warm welcome from many British nobles, including Lady Noel Byron, to whom he dedicated The Garies and Their Friends, and Henry, Lord Brougham, who wrote an enthusiastic introduction. The London firm of G. Routledge and Company published the novel in 1857, with an additional preface by Stowe.

Although The Garies and Their Friends received favorable reviews in England, it went relatively unnoticed in the United States until it was reprinted in 1969. It has less to do with slavery than with the lives of free African Americans in the north, and the violent racism that they face there. Its critique of northern white racism, including its satirical portraits of several “benevolent-minded” but patronizing white Philadelphians, may have made it unpalatable to the readers who had made sentimental abolitionist works like Uncle Tom’s Cabin bestsellers. Moreover, its frank and sympathetic portrayal of a mixed-race marriage would likely have offended even the most progressive readers on both sides of the color line. Critical perspectives on the novel since its 1969 republication have been mixed. While Webb is often faulted for his sentimentalism and his apparent embrace of white middle-class values, he has also been credited for his realistic portrayal of the tense relations between whites and blacks in one of the most racially integrated cities in America at mid-century.

Soon after the novel’s publication, the Webbs relocated to Jamaica, hoping the warmer climate would benefit Mary’s poor health. After Mary’s death in 1859, Webb stayed in Jamaica for ten more years, remarrying and fathering four children before returning to the U.S. in 1869. In Washington, he worked as a clerk for the Freedmen’s Bureau and wrote several essays, poems, and two novellas for the African-American journal, The New Era. Little is known about his later years, but research by Allan Austin and Eric Gardner has revealed that he moved to Galveston, Texas, in 1870, and died there in 1894.

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