(1987) is the fifth of nine novels by Toni Morrison published to date. Regarded by many as her best work, the novel earned National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award nominations in 1987 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. In May 2006,
The New York Timesnamed
Beloved“the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years”, based on a survey of “a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages” (Scott 2006).
Morrison traces the origins of the novel to a project she undertook in the early 1970s while a senior editor at Random House, the production of an encyclopedic scrapbook of African American history and culture titled The Black Book (1974). While editing the book, Morrison came across a newspaper
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Citation: English, Daylanne. "Beloved". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 May 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6382, accessed 22 May 2025.]
