———. The Life of Langston Hughes: I Dream a World.
Vol. 2: 1941–1967.New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988.
Larsen, Nella Marion(Nellie Walker,
Nellye Larson, Nellie Larsen)(1893–1964)
One of the most talented writers of the Harlem
Renaissance era and the first African-American
woman to receive a prestigious GUGGENHEIMFEL-
LOWSHIP. Larsen, who published two novels and
three short stories, also pursued a career as a librar-
ian and nurse. Larsen faded into obscurity after the
Harlem Renaissance, but her career and accom-
plishments have once again attracted critical at-
tention and continue to enrich contemporary
scholarship on the Harlem Renaissance.
She was born in April 1893 in CHICAGO, Illi-
nois, to Peter Walker, a West Indian cook, and
Mary Hanson, a native of Denmark. Her parents
separated shortly after their daughter’s birth. Mary
Hanson Walker then married Peter Larson, a
white Iowan, and the couple had a daughter
named Anna. Nella Larsen, as a result of her step-
father’s encouragement, attended FISK UNIVER-
SITY, where she was enrolled in the high school
division for one year, from 1909 through 1910.
She then returned to Copenhagen, Denmark,
where she had spent some time as a child with her
mother in the late 1890s. During her stay there,
she enrolled at the UNIVERSITY OFCOPENHAGEN.
After two years she returned to NEWYORKCITY
and joined the prestigious nursing program at Lin-
coln Hospital. Following her nursing studies from
1912 through 1915, she returned to the South to
work as an assistant superintendent of nurses at
TUSKEGEEINSTITUTEin Alabama. After one year
there, she joined the Lincoln Hospital staff as a
registered nurse and worked for the New York
City Department of Health. In 1922 she changed
fields and joined the NEWYORKPUBLICLIBRARY
training program. She started as a volunteer but
soon became an assistant librarian at the 135th
Street Branch (HARLEMBRANCH). She eventually
became the children’s librarian. She worked with
director Ernestine Rose, one of the most enterpris-
ing advocates of cultural and literary production
during the Harlem Renaissance.
Larsen married Dr. Elmer Imes in May 1919,
one year after he had become the second African-
American to earn a Ph.D. in physics. Imes, was
born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1883, to Elizabeth
Rachel Wallace Imes, formerly enslaved in
Natchez, Mississippi, and the Reverend Benjamin
Albert Imes, an Oberlin College–educated minis-
ter (Davis, 118). Elmer Imes completed his under-
graduate degree at Fisk University in 1903 and
earned his M.A. at the University of Michigan in- Eight years later, he completed his doctoral
work in physics. In the years immediately following
their marriage, Imes worked at a number of organi-
zations until 1930, when he returned to Fisk as
chair of the physics department. He remained at
Fisk until he died 11 years later. An eminent man,
he was a member of Sigma Pi Phi, a highly exclu-
sive African-American professional men’s organi-
zation whose members were selected on the basis
304 Larsen, Nella Marion
Portrait of Nella Larsen that the writer inscribed to her
friends, Carl Van Vechten and his wife Fania Marinoff
Van Vechten (Yale Collection of American Literature,
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)