"To Be An Author" Letters Of Charles W. Chesnutt 1889-1905

Chesnutt, Charles W. ; edited by Joseph R. McElrath, Jr. & Robert C. Leitz, Iii

ISBN 10: 0691036683 / ISBN 13: 9780691036687

Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1996

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 43479

Bibliographic Details

• Title: "To Be An Author" Letters Of Charles W. Chesnutt 1889-1905
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691036683
• ISBN 13: 9780691036687
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • All
  • Black Studies

About this title

Synopsis

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 publishing industry of the turn of the century. Selected for inclusion are those letters chronicling the rise of Chesnutt, 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 black man during the period. In his insightful commentaries on his own situation, Chesnutt provides a special perspective on life in American during the Gilded Age, the "gay `90s" 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". The editors of this volume 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 the light of Chesnutt's biography and the less-than-promising prospects faced by a would-be literary artist of his racial background. Their annotations explain contempoary events to which Chesnutt responds.

From the Back Cover

"This book will appeal to a growing audience ... of all those interested in the interracial history of American letters and the development of the African-American literary field."--George Hutchinson, author ofThe Harlem Renaissance in Black