Sarah E. Farro was a pioneering nineteenth-century African American novelist, recognized as one of the first Black women to publish a novel in the United States. Born in Illinois around 1859 to parents who had migrated from the American South, Farro grew up in Chicago alongside two younger sisters. Despite her historic literary contribution, relatively few details about her personal life have survived in the historical record.
Farro published her only known novel, True Love: A Story of English Domestic Life, in 1891 through the Chicago publisher Donohue & Henneberry. Set in England, the book is a domestic romance and melodrama centered on a man prevented from marrying his beloved, Janey, due to the interference of her mother. Farro's writing was influenced by prominent authors of the era, including Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Upon its release, True Love received critical acclaim from newspapers in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and contemporary press celebrated it as the first novel published by an African-American woman. The novel was later showcased at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago as part of a collection of works by female writers from Illinois. Although Farro did not publish any subsequent novels, her legacy was honored in 1937 at a Chicago event celebrating "outstanding race pioneers." Her date of death remains unknown.
