page_title: Frank J. Webb
section_title: Marriage and early career
hierarchical_section_title: Frank J. Webb / Biography / Marriage and early career
caption_attribution_description: English: Engraved drawing of Mary E. Webb, captioned "Mrs. Mary E. Webb (a Coloured Native of Philadelphia) Reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, in the Hall of Stafford-House"
context_page_description: Francis Johnson Webb was an African American novelist, poet, and essayist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His novel, The Garies and Their Friends, was the second novel by an African American to be published, and the first to portray the daily lives of free blacks in the North.
context_section_description: As a young man, Frank Webb worked in Philadelphia's vibrant community of free African Americans as a commercial artist. He married in 1845, at the age of 17.
  Mary E. Webb, née Mary Espartero, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1828, shortly after her mother had escaped from slavery in Virginia. Her father was described as "a Spanish gentleman of wealth [who] had made many efforts to purchase the freedom of her mother". Through her mother's efforts, Mary was admitted to a school where her education included poetry and dramatic literature, and developed a talent for performance. As an adult in Philadelphia, she studied elocution.
  Mary soon gained renown for her dramatic readings of works by Shakespeare, Longfellow, and Philip Sheridan. She attracted the attention of Harriet Beecher Stowe and other prominent literary abolitionists. Stowe was so impressed by the readings that she acted as her patron, adapting scenes from her bestselling novel Uncle Tom's Cabin expressly for Mary Webb's performance. In late 1855 and 1856, Mary Webb toured the northeastern United States, including a performance of Uncle Tom attended by Longfellow, who wrote, "A striking scene, this Cleopatra with a white wreath in her dark hair, and a sweet, musical voice, reading to a great, unimpassioned, immovable Boston audience."
  Stowe then helped to arrange a transatlantic tour for the Webbs, and provided a letter of introduction which included her own praise and a postscript that Longfellow had been "much pleased with Mrs. Webb's reading of his new poem Hiawatha". The Webbs traveled to England in 1856, where Mary's dramatic readings garnered further acclaim. The couple received a warm welcome from many British nobles. While in London, Webb asked his friend, Charles Sumner, to write an introductory letter for his wife during her reading tour in Liverpool.
  In 1857, when Frank Webb was 29, the London firm of G. Routledge and Company published his first and only novel,  The Garies and Their Friends. Webb dedicated his book to supporter Lady Noel Byron, who had encouraged him, and Henry, Lord Brougham wrote an enthusiastic introduction. It was published with an additional preface by Stowe.
  The international tour had taken a severe toll on Mary Webb's health, and on the advice of physicians who recommended a warmer climate, the Webbs made an extended visit to Cannes in 1857–1858. The Webbs then relocated in 1858 to Kingston, Jamaica, where Webb's British friends secured him a job with the postal service. However, Mary Webb died there on June 17, 1859.
caption: Mary E. Webb performing a dramatic reading in London, 1856
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