Marie Louise Burgess-Ware

Marie Louise Burgess-Ware was an author of African-American literature, primarily on biracial people in both nonfiction and fiction.

Life and career Little is known about Marie Louise Burgess-Ware. She achieved further success in her writing career after appearing in Colored Magazine in 1903 with her fictional story "Bernice, The Octoroon".

Known works

Nursing writings Found in the Women's Era writings of 1894, Burgess-Ware contributed several pieces of work on nursing including:

"The Nursing of Sick Children", June 1894 The main plot of the story is the conflict Marguerite has when she falls in love with a man named Ronald Ives, who does not share her same religious beliefs as a Presbyterian. Marguerite decides to focus on her nursing career, and wills away the love she has for Ronald, but her feelings persist. It is revealed that Ronald is later married to a woman named Corrine Payne and has a child with her as Marguerite ends up being the nurse tasked with keeping the child alive. The child dies, but first Marguerite makes sure to bless it, as it was never baptized. They part ways once again, but Ronald is convinced by Corrine to be baptized, to which Marguerite ends up being present for. In the end, the two never reconcile, and Marguerite dies. The last scene pans to Ronald with gray hair weeping over her grave. and that authors work The Spanish Gypsy . Both this work and "Bernice, the Octoroon" were published in Colored American Magazine and feature protagonists that are unaware that they are biracial, and thus live in white society. This work has been described as a racial uplift narrative, and an embodiment of the transracial movement. In addition to being printed in Colored American Magazine, this short story has been reprinted in Short Fiction by Black Women, 1900-1920 edited by Elizabeth Ammons. This book compiles the work of Burgess-Ware and other black women writing short fiction in this time period. "Bernice, the Octoroon" is the only work by Burgess-Ware to appear in this collection of stories.