Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) was her fifth novel, and consequently the most controversial work she had ever written. Morrison was working as a senior editor at the publishing firm Random House when she was editing a nineteenth century article which was in a historical book and found the basis for this story. A direct connection between Morrison and this novel is best demonstrated by Morrison's statement of " I deal with five years of terror in a …showed first 75 words of 437 total…

…showed last 75 words of 437 total…sacrificing the other character's vitality until the very end, the novel is left hollow in the middle. However, Snitow did state " If Beloved fails in it's ambitions, it is still a novel by Toni Morrison, still therefore full of beautiful prose, dialogue as rhythmically satisfying as music…and scenes so clearly etched they're like hallucinations" (25-26). Snitow compares Morrison's writing style to Dickens, in that she believes that each of them are great, serious writers.