Sapphira and the Slave Girl

novel by Cather

Written and fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Sapphira and the Slave Girl, novel by Willa Cather, published in 1940. The novel is set in Cather’s native Virginia in the mid-1800s on the estate of a declining slaveholding family. Sapphira and the Slave Girl centres on the family’s matriarch, Sapphira Colbert, and her attempt to sell Nancy Till, a slave girl of mixed descent. Sapphira’s plot is foiled by her husband, Henry, and their widowed daughter, Rachel Blake. A confident, strong-willed invalid, Sapphira...