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by Charles W. Chesnutt (Author), William L. Andrews (Editor), William L. Andrews (Introduction by)
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.Author Biography
William L. Andrews is E. Maynard Adams Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt (1980), To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865 (1986), and Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony, 1840-1865 (2019). A co-editor of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature and The Oxford Companion to African American Literature, he has edited Chesnutt's Conjure Tales and Stories of the Color Line for Penguin Classics. In 2018 he received the Jay B. Hubbell Medal from the Modern Language Association for lifetime achievement in the study of American Literature.
