The Marrow of Tradition (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) - Softcover

Charles W. Chestnutt (1858–1932) was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where his family had moved from Fayettefille, North Carolina, to seek better economic opportunities. Shortly after the Civil War, they returned to Fayetteville, where Chesnutt spent most of his childhood and young adulthood. He taught in local public schools, eventually returning to Cleveland and being admitted to the bar. He established a legal stenography business yet found himself strongly attracted to writing fiction. He published two collections of short stories, The Conjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1890) and three widely reviewed novels, The House Behind the Cedars (1900), The Marrow of Tradition (1901), and The Colonel's Dream (1905), while devoting essays and speeches to agitation for civil rights for African Americans, especially in the South. Unable to support his family as a full-time writer, he resumed his business career but maintained until his death a respected role in African American letters.

Eric J. Sundquist is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches courses about American literature and culture. His books include King’s Dream: The Legacy of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech and Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America. Professor Sundquist has also edited essay collections on Mark Twain, Ralph Ellison, and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Chesnutt, one of the most important African-American writers of the nineteenth century, tells a complex tale of race, injustice, and passion. His style is elaborate; Chesnutt sometimes writes in the formal cadences of the Victorian novel and sometimes in a range of heavy Southern dialects. However, Michael Collins masters all dialects and makes characters as disparate as white trash Captain McBain and Jane, the aged black servant, live with equal facility. A few sound effects, such as period music and crowd sounds during the riot at the book's climax, contribute to give the impression that Collins is performing the book rather than simply reading it. G.T.B. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine