Charles W. Chestnutt's Northern writings describe the ways in which America was reshaping itself at the turn of the 19th century. This collection of Chestnutt's Northern stories portray life in the North in the period between the Civil War and World War I.
Born on the eve of the Civil War, Charles W. Chesnutt grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a county seat of four or five thousand people, a once-bustling commercial center slipping into postwar decline. Poor, black, and determined to outstrip his modest beginnings and forlorn surroundings, Chesnutt kept a detailed record of his thoughts, observations, and activities from his sixteenth through his twenty-fourth year (1874-1882). These journals, printed here for the first time, are remarkable for their intimate account of a gifted young black man's dawning sense of himself as a writer in the nineteenth century. Though he achieved literary success in his time, Chesnutt has only recently been rediscovered and his contribution to American literature given its due. The only known private diary from a nineteenth-century African American author, these pages offer a fascinating glimpse into Chesnutt's everyday experience as he struggled to win the goods of education in the world of the post-Civil War South. An extraordinary portrait of the self-made man beset by the urgencies and difficulties of self-improvement in a racially discriminatory society, Chesnutt's journals unfold a richly detailed local history of postwar North Carolina. They also show with great force how the world of the postwar South obstructed--and, unexpectedly, assisted--a black man of driving intellectual ambitions.
Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) has been considered by many the major African-American fiction writer before the Harlem Renaissance. This book collects essays he wrote from 1899 through 1931, the majority of which concern white racism, and political and literary addresses he made to both white and black audiences from 1881 through 1931.
This book collects the letters written between 1906 and 1932 by the African-American novelist and civil rights activist Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932). His correspondents included prominent members of the Harlem Renaissance as well as major American political figures Chesnutt sought to influence on behalf of his fellow African Americans.
Charles W. Chesnutt was an important voice in his day and remains a precious reading for those who want to better understand the period of construction of African American identity, from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. Critic August Nemo chose seven short stories that bring the best of this author to your appreciation. This books contains: - The Wife of His Youth - The Passing of Grandison - Her Virginia Mammy - The Bouquet - The Sheriffs' Children - The Web of Circunstance
A collection from one of our most influential African American writers An icon of nineteenth-century American fiction, Charles W. Chesnutt, an incisive storyteller of the aftermath of slavery in the South, is widely credited with almost single-handedly inaugurating the African American short story tradition and was the first African American novelist to achieve national critical acclaim. This major addition to Penguin Classics features an ideal sampling of his work: twelve short stories (including conjure tales and protest fiction), three essays, and the novel The Marrow of Tradition. Published here for the 150th anniversary of Chesnutt's birth, The Portable Charles W. Chesnutt will bring to a new audience the genius of a man whose legacy underlies key trends in modern Black fiction. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
An African-American author, essayist and political activist, Charles W. Chesnutt is best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South. Today, Chesnutt is recognised as a major innovator in the tradition of Afro American fiction, who was an important contributor to the deromanticizing of post-Civil War southern literature and a singular voice among turn-of-the-century realists to depict the color line in American life. This eBook presents Chesnutt’s complete published works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Charles W. Chesnutt’s life and works * Concise introductions to the novels and other texts * All the published novels, with individual contents tables * Features rare short stories and essays appearing for the first time in digital publishing * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the short stories * Easily locate short stories you want to read * Ordering of texts into chronological order and genres Please note: the novels ‘A Business Career’, ‘Mandy Oxendine’ and a few other obscure works were published many years after Chesnutt’s death and so cannot appear due to copyright restrictions. CONTENTS: The Novels The House behind the Cedars (1900) The Marrow of Tradition (1901) The Colonel’s Dream (1905) The Short Story Collections The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales (1899) The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line (1899) Uncollected Stories The Short Stories List of Short Stories in Chronological Order List of Short Stories in Alphabetical Order The Non-Fiction Frederick Douglass (1899) The Disfranchisement of the Negro (1903) Uncollected Essays Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks
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 authorship was not to be realized in full. Chronicled here is the rise and fall of Charles W. Chesnutt as a man of letters.
The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line (1899) is a collection of short stories by African American writer, lawyer, and political activist Charles Chesnutt. Originally published in a July 1888 edition of The Atlantic—in which, in 1887, Chesnutt became the first African American to have a story published in its pages—“The Wife of His Youth” has become the author’s most frequently anthologized story. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line contains nine stories and three essays by Charles Chesnutt, a pioneer of African American literature. The title story of the collection follows Mr. Ryder, a light skinned man living in a city in the American Midwest. The founder of the Blue Veins Society, a local club whose members consist of black men with European ancestry, Mr. Ryder plans to propose to a beautiful mixed-race woman named Molly Dixon. As the day of the Blue Vein Ball approaches—he hopes to propose on stage while giving a speech—Ryder meets an older black woman named Liza Jane who assisted her husband, Sam Taylor, in escaping north before the Civil War, but never heard from him again. “The Passing of Grandison,” another story in the collection, is a tale of racial passing set in the 1850s that follows a slave who travels to Canada with the help of a white man. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line is a masterful work of short fiction and essay writing from a pioneer of African American literature. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Charles Chesnutt’s The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.
The Marrow of Tradition" is a 1901 historical novel written by the African-American author Charles W. Chesnutt. Set in 1898, it presents a fictionalised version of events related to the Wilmington Insurrection in Wilmington, a riot enacted by white supremacists in North Carolina. Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858 –1932) was an African-American essayist, lawyer, author, and political activist most famous for his novels and short stories that deal with the issues of racial identity in the post-Civil War South. "The Marrow of Tradition" offers a glimpse into what transpired during the terrible events of that year—highly recommended for those with an interest in African-American history. Contents include: "Charles W. Chesnutt by Benjamin Brawley", "At Break of Day", "The Christening Party", "The Editor at Work", "Theodore Felix", "A Journey Southward", "Janet", "The Operation", "The Campaign Drags", "White Man's 'Nigger'", "Delamere Plays a Trump", etc. Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this historical novel now complete the biography "Charles W. Chesnutt" by Benjamin Brawley.
The Marrow of Tradition (1901) is a historical novel by African American author, lawyer, and political activist Charles Chesnutt. Based on the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898--in which a group of white supremacists rioted and overthrew the elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina, killing hundreds of African Americans and displacing thousands more--The Marrow of Tradition follows two interconnected families on opposite sides of the violence. Set in the fictional city of Wellington, the story begins with Major Carteret, a white newspaper owner whose colleagues and powerful peers are growing increasingly outraged by widespread condemnation of local lynchings. At the same time, a black physician named William Miller is establishing a local medical practice while settling into married life with his wife, Janet, the unacknowledged half-sister of Major Carteret's wife. When Polly Ochiltree, a local white woman, is murdered, a black servant named Sandy Campbell is initially accused. When the identity of the true killer--a white aristocrat--is discovered, however, and when authorities fail to arrest him, the racial tensions dominating Wellington reach their breaking point. The Marrow of Tradition is a harrowing story of family, race, and identity which brilliantly dissects the historical events of the Wilmington Insurrection without sensationalizing them. Although Chesnutt hoped that his book would help to improve race relations in the United States, the book was a commercial and critical failure. For readers today, however, the novel is a picture of how far we have come, and a chilling reminder of how far we have left to go. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.
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