Black American writers : bibliographical essays

208 Pages·1978·40.146 MB·English

by  M. Thomas Inge, Maurice Duke, Jackson R. Bryer

mEssayms
Bibliographical
Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison,
James Baldwin, and Amiri Baraka
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f Edited by
M.Thomas
Inge
Maurice Duke
Jackson R. Bryer
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Black
American
Writers
Bibliographical Essays
Volume 2
Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison,
James Baldwin, and Amiri Baraka
Edited by M. Thomas Inge, Maurice
Duke, and Jackson R. Bryer, Black
American Writers, a two-volume work,
is the most convenient and compre-
hensive source of bibliographical and
critical information about this long-
neglected segment of American litera-
ture. The volumes not only identify but
also assess the available bibliogra-
phies, editions, manuscripts, letters,
autobiographies, and biographies of
America's black writers, as well as the
opinions of hundreds of critics.
The present volume focuses on four
major writers: Richard Wright, Ralph
Ellison, James Baldwin, and Amiri Ba-
raka (LeRoi Jones).
Volume 1 begins with the early writers
(Mammon, Wheatley, and Banneker),
continues through the slave narratives
and the polemicists (Walker, Douglass,
Washington, and Du Bois) to the mod-
ern writers (Brown, Chesnutt, Delany,
Dunbar, Griggs, Harper, and Webb)
and the Harlem Renaissance (featuring
Bontemps, Cullen, Johnson, McKay,
and Toomer), and ends with a chapter
on Langston Hughes.
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BOSTON
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BLACK AMERICAN WRITERS
Bibliographical Essays
Volume 2 RICHARD WRIGHT, RALPH ELLISON,
JAMES BALDWIN, AND AMIRI BARAKA

Black American Writers
Bibliographical Essays
Volume 2 RICHARD WRIGHT,
RALPH ELLISON, JAMES
BALDWIN, AND AMIRI BARAKA
Edited by
THOMAS
M. INGE
MAURICE DUKE
JACKSON BRYER
R.
New York St. Martin's Press
Library of Congress Calalog Card Number: 77-85987
©
Copyright 1978 by St. Martin's Press, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
21098
fedcba
For information, write St. Martin's Press, Inc.,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010
cover design: Mie's Hora
ISBN: 0-312-08295-9
PREFACE
The last two decades have witnessed a great proliferation of scholar-
ship devoted to the history and culture of Afro-Americans. And out of
this increasing recognition of the contribution ofblacks to the develop-
ment of this nation has come a significant reassessment ofthe aesthetic
and humanistic achievements of black writers.
Black American Writers: Bibliographical Essays is intended as an apprais-
al of the best biographical and critical writings about America's seminal
black writers, as well as an identification of manuscript and special
resources for continued study. It is also intended to give an overview of
the current state of scholarly recognition of the lives and careers of
these authors and an appreciation of their works.
The coverage is intentionally selective, both in the figures involved
and the material examined in each chapter. Yet we feel that, within our
self-imposed chronological limit, no major Afro-American literary fig-
ure has been overlooked. Volume 1 covers the early black writers ofthe
eighteenth century, the slave narratives, the early modern writers, the
Harlem Renaissance, and Langston Hughes. Volume 2 focuses on four
major twentieth-century black writers: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison,
James Baldwin, and Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones). A bibliographical
survey of the great number of black American writers who have come
to prominence since Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, and Baraka would re-
quire another volume or volumes and, given the rich and vigorous
production of black writers today and the continual emergence of new
figures, would perhaps be premature.
Our hope is that the bibliographical essays in these volumes, all by
specialists on their topics, will aid and encourage further study ofblack
American writers and literature.
M. Thomas Inge
Maurice Duke
Jackson R. Bryer
Digitized by the Internet Archive
2013
in
http://archive.org/details/blackamericanwriOOmtho