Facts about Beloved
- 06
Published in 1987 by Alfred A. Knopf, Beloved was later adapted into a 1998 film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Oprah Winfrey as Sethe.
- 05
Beloved's narrative structure employs multiple non-linear perspectives and fragmented flashbacks across 324 pages, requiring readers to piece together the story from different characters' viewpoints rather than following a conventional chronological plot.
- 04
Sethe's infanticide in Beloved occurs in 1855 Cincinnati, drawing from the real 1856 case of Margaret Garner, though Morrison deliberately shifted the historical timeline by one year for narrative purposes.
- 03
Morrison spent sixteen years writing Beloved after publishing Song of Solomon in 1977, crafting the novel while working full-time as a senior editor at Random House.
- 02
The character Beloved in Morrison's 1988 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was inspired by Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman who escaped to Ohio in 1856 and killed her child rather than see her returned to slavery.
- 01
Toni Morrison's Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, thirteen years after its 1975 publication of Song of Solomon.