Collected in this volume are the 1889--1905 letters of one of the first African-American literary artists to cross the "color line" into the de facto segregated American publishing industry of the turn of the century. Selected for inclusion are those chronicling the rise of Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932), an attorney and businessman in Cleveland, Ohio, who achieved prominence as a novelist, short story writer, essayist, and lecturer despite the obstacles faced by a man of color during the "Jim Crow" period. In his ...
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Collected in this volume are the 1889--1905 letters of one of the first African-American literary artists to cross the "color line" into the de facto segregated American publishing industry of the turn of the century. Selected for inclusion are those chronicling the rise of Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932), an attorney and businessman in Cleveland, Ohio, who achieved prominence as a novelist, short story writer, essayist, and lecturer despite the obstacles faced by a man of color during the "Jim Crow" period. In his insightful commentaries on his own situation, Chesnutt provides as well a special perspective on life-at-large in America during the Gilded Age, the "gay '90s" (which were not so gay for African Americans), and the Progressive era. Like his black correspondents--Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, T. Thomas Fortune, and William M. Trotter--he was one of the major commentators on what was then termed the "Negro Problem." His most distinguished novels, The House Behind the Cedars (1900) and The Marrow of Tradition (1901), were published by major "white" presses of the time; not only did his editors and publishers but then-preeminent black and white critics greet these literary protests against racism as proof of the intellectual and artistic excellence of which a long-oppressed people were capable when afforded equal opportunity. Since the 1960s, when the rediscovery of his genius began in earnest, Chesnutt has received even more recognition than he enjoyed by the early 1900s. Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., and Robert C. Leitz, III, have surveyed every collection of Chesnutt's papers and those of his correspondents in order to reconstruct the story of his most vital years as an author. Their introduction contextualizes the letters in light of Chesnutt biography and the less-than-promising prospects faced by a would-be literary artist of his racial background. Their encyclopedic annotations explaining contemporary events to which Chesnutt responds and what was then transpiring in both black and white cultural environments illuminate not only Chesnutt's character but those of many now unfamiliar figures who also contributed to what Chesnutt termed the "cause." Provided in this first-ever edition of Chesnutt's letters is a detailed portrait of one of the pioneers in the African-American literary tradition and a panorama of American life a century ago. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
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Very Good. Very Good condition. Very Good dust jacket. A copy that may have a few cosmetic defects. May also contain light spine creasing or a few markings such as an owner's name, short gifter's inscription or light stamp.
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Princeton. 1996. Princeton University Press. 1st Printing. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0691036683. Edited by Joseph R. McElrath Jr. & Robert C. Leitz III. 248 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Diane Levy. keywords: Literature America African American. FROM THE PUBLISHER-Long eclipsed by the writers who later rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance, Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) has received a steadily increasing amount of attention since the 1960s. In what he termed the 'Post-Bellum-Pre-Harlem' phase of African-American cultural history, this pioneer in the world of black letters vied with Paul Laurence Dunbar for the honor of being the first to 'evince innate distinction in literature. ' The major establishment critic of his day, William Dean Howells, recognized Dunbar's poetry thus in 1896. But it was Chesnutt who won Howells's praise for prose fiction a few years later when The Conjure Woman (1899) and The Wife of His Youth (1899) appeared. His other books, Frederick Douglass (1899), The House Behind the Cedars (1900), The Marrow of Tradition (1901), and The Colonel's Dream (1905), have since secured his permanent place in the history of American belles lettres. Selected for inclusion in this first edition of Chesnutt's letters are those that best document the vibrant personality of a very successful Cleveland businessman who gave his free hours to the literary avocation that he had hoped would someday become his full-time career. Motivated as well by a desire to continue the noble work that the Abolitionists and Reconstruction Era reformers had begun, Chesnutt pursued the goal that he had announced in his journal years earlier in Fayetteville, N.C., before he emigrated to the North in 1883: he would not only demonstrate what African Americans were capable of intellectually but would, through his art, 'elevate the whites' above ignoble prejudice against those of his racial background. By 1905 he had both succeeded and failed. To his mind he had reached the goal of transcending the earlier achievements of reform-novelists Harriet Beecher Stowe and Albion W. Tourgee. But such fame as Booker T. Washington's at the turn of the century eluded him. By late 1905, it was clear that his 1880s' dream of professional authors. inventory #24181.
