Description
Book SynopsisThe Norton Critical Edition of this hugely influential novel gives readers the fullest possible sense of its historical background and critical assessment.
Table of ContentsIntroduction by Werner Sollors
Charles W. Chesnutt's Own View of His New Story,
The Marrow of Tradition (1901)
Acknowledgments
The Text of The Marrow of Tradition
Contexts
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Frances Richardson Keller o [Chesnutt's Parents]
SELECTED LETTERS
To Walter Hines Page, Nov. 11, 1898
To Walter Hines Page, Mar. 22, 1899
To Booker T. Washington, Oct. 8, 1901
To Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Oct. 26, 1901
From Booker T. Washington, Oct. 28, 1901
To Booker T. Washington, Nov. 16, 1901
To Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Dec. 30, 1901
To William Monroe Trotter [Jan. 1902]
From W. E. B. Du Bois to Houghton Mifflin, Mar. 8, 1902
To Mrs. W. B. Henderson, Nov. 11, 1905
LITERARY MEMORANDA
Charles W. Chesnutt o [Plot Notes]
Sample Pages from Chesnutt's Hand-Corrected Proof Sheets of The Marrow of Tradition
ESSAYS
From The Courts and the Negro
From What Is a White Man?
The White and the Black
The Disfranchisement of the Negro
THE 1898 WILMINGTON RIOT
Rebecca Latimer Felton, Alexander L. Manly, and the Daily Record Editorial
John E. Talmadge o [Biographical Sketch of Mrs. Felton]
Rebecca Latimer Felton o Mrs. Felton Speaks
Biographical Sketch of Alex Manly
Alex Manly o Editorial
From Cause of Carolina Riots
The North Carolina Race Conflict
From Takes Mrs. Felton to Task for Speech
Mrs. W. H. Felton's Reply to Dr. Hawthorne's Attack
Nov. 10, 1898: A Day of Blood
North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources o Wilmington Race Riot Draft Report
1898 Wilmington Riot Commission o Findings
Hell Jolted Loose
White Declaration of Independence Negro Rule Ended, Washington Post (Nov. 11, 1898)
The Riot at Wilmington, Washington Post (Nov. 22, 1898)
A Forgotten Issue, Boston Globe (Nov. 20, 1898)
Is It Negro Rule? Independent (Nov. 24, 1898)
The South and Negro Suffrage, New-York Tribune (Nov. 25, 1898)
Portrait of Alfred Moore Waddell
Alfred Moore Waddell o The Story of the Wilmington, N.C., Race Riot, Collier's Weekly (Nov. 26, 1898)
Black Side of the Race Issue, Washington Post (Dec. 4, 1898)
The Wilmington Riot, Cleveland Gazette (Dec. 10, 1898)
Letter by a Negro Woman to President William McKinley (Nov. 13, 1898)
African Americans Killed or Wounded
Men Banished from Wilmington during and after the November 10 Violence
The Wilmington Riot, Chesnutt's Relatives, and African American Fiction
Sylvia Lyons Render o [Violence]
Richard Yarborough o Violence, Manhood, and Black Heroism
THE CAKEWALK
Sheet Music from the 1890s
Dusky Dinah: Cake-Walk and Patrol
Sambo at the Cake Walk
Remus Takes the Cake
Way Down South: Characteristic March, Cake-Walk and Two-Step
Cakewalk in the Contemporary Press
A Negro Festival, New-York Tribune (July 20, 1870)
A Cake Walk, San Francisco Chronicle (Oct. 6, 1873)
H. S. Keller o The Cake Walk," Puck (Sept. 7, 1887)
They Walked for a Cake and Glory, Chicago Daily Tribune (Feb. 18, 1892)
The Cake Walk, New York Times (Feb. 18, 1892)
Took the Cake, Boston Globe (Aug. 23, 1892)
CRITICISM
SELECTED CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS AND EARLY ASSESSMENTS
The Race Question in Fiction, The Sunday Herald [Boston] (Oct. 27, 1901)
Hamilton Wright Mabie o The New Books, The Outlook (Nov. 16, 1901)
Our Holiday Book Table, Zion's Herald (Dec. 4, 1901)
Mr. Chesnutt's Marrow of Tradition, New York Times (Dec. 7, 1901)
A New Uncle Tom's Cabin, St. Paul Dispatch (Dec. 14, 1901)
Katherine Glover o News in the World of Books, Atlanta Journal (Dec. 14, 1901)
Charles Alexander o Our Journalist and Literary Folks, The Freeman [Indianapolis] (Dec. 28, 1901)
Mr. Chesnutt and the Negro Problem, Newark Sunday News. (Dec. 29, 1901)
A. E. H. o Fiction, The Chautauquan (Dec. 1901)
William Dean Howells o From A Psychological Counter-Current in Recent Fiction, North American Review (Dec. 1901)
T. Thomas Fortune o Note and Comment, The New York Age (July 20, 1905)
Sterling A. Brown, Arthur P. Davis, and Ulysses Lee o [Racial Conflict in Fiction]
RECEPTION
Sylvia Lyons Render o From Charles W. Chesnutt
William L. Andrews o From The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt
CHARACTERS
John Edgar Wideman o Charles W. Chesnutt: The Marrow of Tradition
P. Jay Delmar o Character and Structure in The Marrow of Tradition
Ernestine Williams Pickens o White Supremacy and Southern Reform Samina Najmi o From Janet, Polly, and Olivia: Constructs of Blackness and White Femininity in The Marrow of Tradition
JUNGIAN AND FOUCAULDIAN APPROACHES
Marjorie George and Richard S. Pressman o From Confronting the Shadow: Psycho-Political Repression in The Marrow of Tradition
Ryan Jay Friedman o From "Between Absorption and Extinction": Charles Chesnutt and Biopolitical Racism
PLESSY V. FERGUSON AND THE MARROW OF TRADITION
U.S. Supreme Court o Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896)
Brook Thomas o The Legal Argument of Charles W. Chesnutt's Novels
THE MARROW OF TRADITION AND HISTORY
Joyce Pettis o The Literary Imagination and the Historic Event: Chesnutt's Use of History in The Marrow of Tradition
Jae H. Roe o From Keeping an "Old Wound" Alive: The Marrow of Tradition and the Legacy of Wilmington
Eric Sundquist o From Charles Chesnutt's Cakewalk
REALISM, TRAGIC MULATTO, VIOLENCE
Ryan Simmons o From Simple and Complex Discourse in The Marrow of Tradition
Stephen P. Knadler o From Untragic Mulatto: Charles Chesnutt and the Discourse of Whiteness
Bryan Wagner o Charles Chesnutt and the Epistemology of Racial Violence
Charles W. Chesnutt: A Chronology
Selected Bibliography
