African American Studies Charles W. Chesnutt
by
Charles Duncan
  • LAST REVIEWED: 11 May 2023
  • LAST MODIFIED: 28 June 2016
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0037

Introduction

Subsequent to an African American literary tradition built almost entirely on slave narratives—nonfiction autobiographical accounts of life in slavery—Charles W. Chesnutt (b. 1858–d. 1932) became the first major black fiction writer. Although he wrote a few powerful essays, usually regarding race in the United States, his reputation rests primarily on his novels and short stories, written during what he termed the “post-bellum, pre-Harlem” era of African American literature. The scope of those fictionalized accounts of mostly, but not exclusively, African American lives varies widely: dialect stories chronicling antebellum life on plantations; nondialect stories detailing the lives of economically mobile African Americans in the post–Civil War North; novels depicting various adaptations, including passing, to racial and social reimaginations of an evolving country. Chesnutt’s biography, too, reflects a varied life, one that engendered in him a range of perspectives on an evolving cultural and social country. He grew up in the Reconstruction South and worked as a teacher and administrator in a Normal School in North Carolina. Later, he lived briefly in New York (working at a newspaper) before settling in Cleveland, Ohio, where he became a successful businessman with a court reporting business. With some striking literary successes—he published short fiction in the Atlantic Monthly and was praised by William Dean Howells and others—Chesnutt committed fully, but briefly, to his writing career, and his output during that time is impressive: two collections of short fiction, three novels, a biography (of Frederick Douglass), and some compelling essays. Ultimately disappointed with both the financial return—his novel based on the Wilmington Riots sold about 1,000 copies while Thomas Dixon’s racist account of the same events sold nearly 100,000—and the reviews, he returned reluctantly to his business career, continuing to write but with far less professional devotion. Chesnutt published a handful of stories after 1905, but the most significant addendums to his literary career are the five novels published posthumously. Because all five reached print since 1997, an entire new thread of Chesnutt scholarship has emerged. Taken together, Chesnutt’s works—whether published during his lifetime or subsequently—describe an author wrestling not only with race issues, but also with the rapid, complex (and ongoing) evolution of a new “America.”

Primary Texts

Chesnutt’s primary texts provide an interesting set of data in that, while his short fiction appeared either in collections or magazines during his lifetime, much of the rest of his work— five novels and many essays and speeches—did not reach publication until after his death in 1932.

Short Stories

Chesnutt’s early reputation derived from his short fiction, much of which appeared originally in journals and magazines of the time, including, most notably, Atlantic Monthly. The Conjure Woman (Chesnutt 1899a) and The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (Chesnutt 1899b) were his best-known works during his lifetime. Chesnutt 1992, edited by William L. Andrews, and Chesnutt 2004, edited by Charles Duncan, repackage and remix the short stories and provide useful context.

  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The Conjure Woman. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899a.

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    Chesnutt’s first collection of short fiction included seven similarly structured and, for the most part, similarly themed stories. Each of the works are told in frame-story style, with the outside frame set in post–Civil War North Carolina and including the interactions between an ex-slave raconteur (Julius) and a relocating Ohio husband (John) and wife (Annie), both of whom are white.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899b.

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    Published the same year as The Conjure Woman, this collection differs from its predecessor in that it focuses primarily on the postbellum period; in fact, many of the stories in this collection are set in the Reconstruction North. Nevertheless, several of the works here depict the ongoing consequences of slavery even as African American and mixed-race characters attempt, with varying levels of success, to adapt to—and help shape—an America undergoing significant change in the post–Civil War era.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. “Baxter’s Procrustes.” Atlantic Monthly 93 (1904): 823–830.

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    Uncollected during Chesnutt’s lifetime but often mentioned as among the author’s best short stories. The work makes no mention of race, although some commenters—Andrews and Duncan among them—have seen it as a sly race commentary. The story is a very funny satire of book collectors on the surface but seems more an incisive exposure of readers.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The Short Fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt. Edited by Sylvia Lyons Render. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1981.

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    A very useful bringing together of many of Chesnutt’s short fictions that are not collected in Conjure Woman or Wife of His Youth and Other Tales. Although several are not of Chesnutt’s usual literary standards, they illustrate primarily his early efforts at creating art that would sell. Render’s introduction is also a helpful thumbnail sketch of Chesnutt’s biography, his writing, and some background information.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. Collected Stories of Charles W. Chesnutt. Edited by William L. Andrews. New York: Penguin, 1992.

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    A very useful collection of Chesnutt’s strongest short fiction, including stories from both Conjure Woman and Wife of His Youth, as well as “Baxter’s Procrustes,” one of Chesnutt’s best works. Edited with an introduction by Andrews, who is one of Chesnutt’s best, most reliable scholars.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The Northern Stories of Charles W. Chesnutt. Edited by Charles Duncan. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2004.

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    A collection of Chesnutt’s fiction that, for the most part, features stories that are set in “Groveland,” which seems a proxy for Cleveland, the author’s adopted home. Generally, the stories in the collection depict the lives of African American and mixed-race characters struggling—sometimes tragically, sometimes comically—with the tumult of life in a country remaking itself following the Civil War. The collection includes selections from Wife of His Youth and several uncollected Chesnutt stories also set in the North.

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Novels

Chesnutt’s novels—particularly The Marrow of Tradition (Chesnutt 1901)—proved more controversial than his short fiction. The three novels published during his life—The House Behind the Cedars (Chesnutt 1900), The Marrow of Tradition, and The Colonel’s Dream (Chesnutt 1905)—are generally considered to be his best novels.

  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The House behind the Cedars. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1900.

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    Chesnutt’s first published novel focuses on the travails of a mixed-race family—mother, son, and daughter—whose lives are, both literally and figuratively, hidden from public scrutiny. The narrative trajectory of the daughter mirrors in many ways the traditional “tragic mulatta” plot, but the son’s success at passing overturns that easy characterization.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The Marrow of Tradition. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1901.

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    The second of Chesnutt’s novel, Marrow traces the personal conflicts of an extended family of white, black, and mixed-race characters against the backdrop of the Wilmington, North Carolina, race riots of 1898.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The Colonel’s Dream. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1905.

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    Set in North Carolina following the Civil War, the novel depicts the attempts of the white colonel Henry French to bring racial and economic equity to a small town. That his efforts emphatically fail seems to align with Chesnutt’s increasing pessimism regarding race in the United States, most especially the South. The Colonel’s Dream also serves as the end of Chesnutt’s major publishing period, with only a handful of fiction works and essays appearing in print after the publication of this novel.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. Mandy Oxendine. Edited by Charles Hackenberry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

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    Another of the novels unpublished during the author’s life, Mandy Oxendine is interesting both in its own right and as a clear precedent for House behind the Cedars. Both novels depict mixed-race characters living on and occasionally to one side or the other of the so-called color line. The female protagonist, Mandy Oxendine, anticipates the Rena Walden of House but seems a more provocative character than the often-passive Rena.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. Paul Marchand, F.M.C. Edited by Dean McWilliams. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999a.

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    One of five Chesnutt novels to be published posthumously. Written at the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance but not published until 1999, Paul Marchand, F.M.C. (Free Man of Color), turns the usual “passing” plot on its head, as the central character, although apparently white, chooses to pass as a black man for a variety of principled reasons. McWilliams offers a helpful introduction.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The Quarry. Edited by Dean McWilliams. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999b.

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    The last of Chesnutt’s completed novels, written in 1928—four years before the author’s death—but not published until 1999. In the novel, the protagonist, a light-skinned talented figure who is conflicted about his race and his adopted parents, becomes a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. The novel incorporates fiction and fact, including brief appearances from such figures as Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois. Like Paul Marchand, F.M.C., this novel benefits from a thoughtful introduction by McWilliams.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. A Business Career. Edited by Matthew Wilson and Marjan A. van Schaik. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005a.

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    One of six unpublished novels left behind at Chesnutt’s death, A Business Career is remarkable for several reasons. It focuses on a relatively modern concept: the “new woman” of the 1890s, embodied in Stella Merwin, who lives briefly—and in “disguise”—in a stenographer’s office. Finally, all of the major characters in the novel are white and thus race has little role, which is a departure from his usual subjects. Unpublished until 2005.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. Evelyn’s Husband. Edited by Matthew Wilson and Marjan A. van Schaik. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005b.

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    Another of the novels left unpublished at Chesnutt’s death. Like A Business Career, also edited with an introduction by Wilson and van Shaik for the first time in 2005, Evelyn’s Husband focuses on white characters and stands in contrast to most of his work. This novel is an odd combination of love story and adventure, set in Boston, Brazil, and an all-but-deserted island on which the two suitors of Evelyn coincidentally find themselves.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The Marrow of Tradition: A Norton Critical Edition. Edited by Werner Sollors. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012.

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    This edition has extensive secondary sources that serve as helpful context for the novel.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The Colonel’s Dream. Edited by R. J. Ellis. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2014.

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    The first scholarly edition of the last novel published (1905) during Chesnutt’s life. Ellis edits the text and provides notes and a substantial introduction that touches briefly on biography of the author, historical contexts, and the novel’s plot, among other topics. The book lacks an index.

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Essays, Journals, Letters, Speeches

Chesnutt left behind useful documents for readers to contextualize his life, times, and writings. The Journals (Chesnutt 1993), Essays and Speeches (Chesnutt 1999), and two collections of letters—“To Be an Author” (Chesnutt 1997) and An Exemplary Citizen (Chesnutt 2002)—provide clear documentary evidence of Chesnutt’s career.

  • Chesnutt, Charles W. “What Is a White Man?” The Independent (New York), 30 May 1889: 5–6.

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    Chesnutt’s annihilation, by means of his close reading of racial laws, of attempts by southern states to define race. He demonstrates how each state establishes different standards for calling a citizen white or black, and then in grand ironic tones he wonders how it’s possible to enforce—both legally and socially—principles that defy classification using standards.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. “The Future American: What the Race Is Likely to Become in the Process of Time.” Boston Evening Transcript, 18 August 1900: 20.

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    One of a series of three “future American” essays Chesnutt wrote in 1900—the other two are the provocatively titled “The Future American: A Complete Amalgamation Likely to Occur” and the even more provocatively titled “The Future American: A Stream of Dark Blood in the Veins of Southern Whites.” As one can guess from the latter two essays, Chesnutt unflinchingly presents his view that the races will eventually assimilate.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. “Post-Bellum – Pre-Harlem.” The Colophon 38 (February 1931): 193–194.

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    Largely a recounting of his own publication history, focusing on The Conjure Woman. By the end of the essay, though, Chesnutt discusses the “marked change” in the attitudes of publishers and the public toward African American writers, especially those of the Harlem Renaissance. Chesnutt sees himself as one of the primary bridges between the slave narratives and novels and the writings of the Harlem era.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The Journals of Charles Chesnutt. Edited by Richard Brodhead. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993.

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    Chesnutt’s early diaries reveal a great deal about the future author he would become. Here he grapples with the barriers to improvement facing an African American in the post–Civil War South, and he wrestles with his own identity, racial and otherwise, as he ponders whether to “pass” or not.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. “To Be an Author”: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1889–1905. Edited by Joseph R. McElrath Jr. and Robert C. Leitz III. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.

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    Collected letters of Chesnutt in the early phase of his life through 1905, including correspondence with such figures as DuBois and Washington. Impressive annotations and notes shedding light on historical, literary, and personal references.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. Charles W. Chesnutt: Essays and Speeches. Edited by Joseph R. McElrath, Robert C. Leitz III, and Jesse S. Crisler. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

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    An important and convenient collection of Chesnutt’s seventy-seven essays and speeches, many of which focus on race issues, including disfranchisement, segregation and integration, and the future of race in general. Spanning the years from 1881 to 1931, the reader receives a panoramic view on Chesnutt’s views, including those on women’s rights and Alexander Dumas.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. An Exemplary Citizen: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1906–1932. Edited by Jesse S. Crisler, Robert C. Leitz III, and Joseph R. McElrath Jr. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.

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    The letters from this period in Chesnutt’s life, subsequent to his major publishing phase, shows a figure still committed to integrationist politics, one who corresponds with both black and white contemporaries. Many letters collected within the volume show Chesnutt’s other interests, transcending race matters.

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Autobiography and Multigenre Collections

Further evidence of Chesnutt’s growing critical acceptance can be found in recent collections of the author’s works, including Stories, Novels & Essays (Chesnutt 2002) and The Portable Charles W. Chesnutt (Chesnutt 2008), the latter edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the always reliable William L. Andrews.

  • Chesnutt, Charles W. Frederick Douglass. Boston: Small, Maynard, 1899.

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    Also published in 1899, the same year during which both Conjure Woman and Wife of His Youth appeared. The biography was an entry in Small Maynard’s popular series of biographical sketches Beacon Biographies of Eminent Americans, and it celebrated Douglass as a self-made man and successful American.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. Stories, Novels & Essays. New York: Library Classics of the United States, 2002.

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    A very useful collection in that it contains two of the novels, both collections of fiction, some uncollected stories, and a few of the essays. Werner Sollors selected the contents and wrote helpful notes for the collection. There is no introduction or other commentary, however, other than the notes.

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  • Chesnutt, Charles W. The Portable Charles W. Chesnutt. Edited by William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr. New York: Penguin, 2008.

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    A collection of a selection of Chesnutt short stories, The Marrow of Tradition, and three essays, with an introduction by Andrews.

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Biographies

Chesnutt is not a particularly complicated biographical figure—among his voluminous letters, journals, and the undisputed central (and most peripheral) events of his life, his personal story is mostly clear. Keller 1978 offers a good introduction to his biography. Andrews 1980 presents the strongest overview of the life mixed with a well-balanced critical eye.

  • Andrews, William L. The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.

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    An early and very good overview of Chesnutt’s life and careers (business and writing). Andrews work situates the author as a man of his times, fully aware and grappling with the racial, social, and cultural contexts of both the antebellum South and the Reconstruction North. The book also offers excellent close readings of most of Chesnutt’s work that had been published during his lifetime.

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  • Chesnutt, Helen. Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952.

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    Presents a more personal look at Chesnutt’s life as this biography was written by one of the author’s daughters. She lovingly depicts him and his commitment to his family. Much more personal—although not in the modern, sensationalistic fashion.

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  • Keller, Francis Richardson. An American Crusade. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1978.

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    Probably the closest text resembling a “pure” biography. Traces his life from birth to his death in chronological fashion, covering his business interests, his writing career, and his “confrontation” with national issues.

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  • Render, Sylvia Lyons. Charles W. Chesnutt. Boston: Twayne, 1980.

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    An overview of Chesnutt’s biography and work that may seem less complete now that so many additional texts of the author have reached print. Edited with an introduction by Render, an important figure in early Chesnutt studies.

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Literary Criticism

Scholarship concerning Chesnutt has become a going concern since the 1990s especially, with the author serving as the subject of several books, in addition to myriad essays, articles, and dissertations. Recent readers have found him to be a far more complicated figure than early reviewers imagined.

Journal Articles

Journal articles on Chesnutt reflect a reimagining of race-based analysis of Chesnutt’s work. Wright and Glass 2010 and Nowlin 2012 offer important broad commentary. Barnard 2014 and Hubbs 2013 ground the author’s work in historical context. Kilgore 2012 and Mariano 2013 approach Marrow from compelling new perspectives, while Johnson 2014 uses a postcolonialist lens to look at one of the novels unpublished during Chesnutt’s life. Wooley 2012 provides a very different take on Colonel’s Dream, traditionally seen as his bitter farewell to the literary world.

  • Barnard, John Levi. “Ancient History, American Time: Chesnutt’s Outsider Classicism and the Present Past.” PMLA 129.1 (2014): 71–86, 160.

    DOI: 10.1632/pmla.2014.129.1.71Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Suggests that “black classicism” began to emerge to resist failing narratives of America. In response, Chesnutt and other African American writers who had little faith in the progress of civilization on race issues developed that classicism as a link to the ancient world.

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  • Hubbs, Jolene. “Goophering Jim Crow: Charles Chesnutt’s 1890’s America.” American Literary Realism (ALR) 46.1 (2013): 12–26.

    DOI: 10.5406/amerlitereal.46.1.0012Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Argues that Chesnutt transformed (“goophered”) the social, cultural, and racial oppression of the Jim Crow era. Hubbs finds Chesnutt’s narrative strategy to be an indirect yet incisive subversion of the white supremacist rhetoric of America in the 1890s, where race is a fluid construct, but class—even for whites—is not.

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  • Johnson, Lynn R. “Bearing the Burden of Loss: Melancholic Agency in Charles W. Chesnutt’s Paul Marchand, FMC.” Southern Literary Journal 47.1 (2014): 1–20.

    DOI: 10.1353/slj.2014.0021Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A reading of one of Chesnutt’s posthumously published novels that uses as a lens a Haitian character to build the case for the author as postcolonialist critic. An interesting reading that demonstrates the extent to which Chesnutt’s works have become subjects of the trends in theory since the 1990s.

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  • Kilgore, John Mac. “The Cakewalk of Capital in Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 84.1 (2012): 61–87.

    DOI: 10.1215/00029831-1540950Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Argues that in Marrow Chesnutt responds to a Reconstruction America that embraces romanticized plantation fiction; an Interesting take on how Chesnutt’s novel thus represents realism more precisely “than Howells can admit.”

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  • Mariano, Trinyan. “The Law of Torts and the Logic of Lynching in Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 128.3 (2013): 559–574, 855.

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    An application of the law, specifically tort law, in reading Marrow, a particularly apt approach given Chesnutt’s training as an attorney.

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  • Nowlin, Michael. “‘The First Negro Novelist’: Charles Chesnutt’s Point of View and the Emergence of African American Literature.” Studies in American Fiction 39.2 (2012): 147–174.

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    An essay focusing on the cross-pollination, oddly enough, between Chesnutt’s “dismissive” attitude toward previous African American authors and Jim Crow laws, which impelled Chesnutt and others to form a true African American literature, one that combined to propel Chesnutt into being a “foundational author.”

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  • Rudolph, Kerstin. “A Woman of One’s Own Blood: John Walden and the Making of White Masculinity in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The House behind the Cedars.” American Literary Realism (ALR) 46.1 (2013): 27–46.

    DOI: 10.5406/amerlitereal.46.1.0027Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A reading of House that explores the racial and gender dynamics that govern the novel and perhaps Chesnutt’s thinking about those subjects. Argues that John Walden is allowed to construct a white identity, one accepted by those around him (including those who know the racial “truth”), while Rena is permitted no such access.

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  • Wooley, Christine A. “The Necessary Fictions of Charles Chesnutt’s The Colonel’s Dream.” Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures 65.2 (2012): 173–198.

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    A surprisingly optimistic interpretation of Chesnutt’s last published novel, one usually read as the culmination of the author’s race despair. Wooley argues that, in the character of the colonel, Chesnutt presents a sustaining fiction in his project to reframe the “immensity” of the race problems in the South, in particular, and the United States, in general.

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  • Wright, Susan Prothro, and Ernestine Pickens Glass, eds. Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010.

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    A collection of essays focusing on Chesnutt’s use (or avoidance) of passing in his short fiction and novels. Particularly important here is that the collection considers, as earlier collections of essays regarding Chesnutt did not, several of the author’s posthumously published novels, including individual essays devoted to Evelyn’s Husband, Paul Marchand, F.M.C, and Mandy Oxendine.

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Books

McElrath 1999 provides the best single resource—a variety of views on Chesnutt’s work. Wonham 1996 and Wilson 2004 offer commentary on Chesnutt’s sophisticated use of and resistance to race issues. Duncan 1998 and McWilliams 2002 expand on previous notions of Chesnutt scholarship. Simmons 2006 studies Chesnutt’s work through the prism of realism, while Weitman 2003 considers the author’s professional life in Cleveland as a context for his writings.

  • Duncan, Charles. The Absent Man: The Narrative Craft of Charles W. Chesnutt. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1998.

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    Studies primarily Chesnutt’s short fiction through the prism of narrative theory. The book considers the short fiction, both from the collections and from the lesser-known works, in terms of how Chesnutt arranges the narrative situation. Duncan does not consider the works unpublished in Chesnutt’s life but offers close readings of most of the short fiction.

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  • McElrath, Joseph R., Jr., ed. Critical Essays on Charles W. Chesnutt. New York: G. K. Hall, 1999.

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    A collection of reviews, commentaries, articles, and essays focusing on Chesnutt’s writings. The book features dozens of early contemporary reviews, some revealing the astute literary judgments of William Dean Howells, others appalling in their thinly (or not at all) veiled racism. Combined with those reviews are more than a dozen essays and articles from the 1960s through the late 1990s. Overall, a very helpful guide to early reactions to Chesnutt and the emerging critical attention being paid him.

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  • McWilliams, Dean. Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2002.

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    Offers excellent analysis of an array of Chesnutt’s writings, including his journals, essays, and all six of his (at that time) published novels. McWilliams examines these texts as linguistic “artifacts” that reveal Chesnutt’s sophisticated anticipation of 20th-century literary and narrative approaches.

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  • Simmons, Ryan. Chesnutt and Realism: A Study of the Novels. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006.

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    Considers Chesnutt’s novels, including those not published in the author’s lifetime, in terms of the central literary movement of the time, realism. Simmons offers close readings of the novels and expands the definition of realism as a means of depicting in Chesnutt an author who, though constrained by ungenerous racial and social politics of the time, found imaginative ways to make realism serve as a useful and successful means through which to view race.

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  • Weitman, Carl, ed. The Professional and Literary Careers of Charles W. Chesnutt: A Rowfant Club Symposium. Cleveland: Rowfant Club, 2003.

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    A collection of papers presented at the Rowfant Club in Cleveland, a club in which Chesnutt was the first African American member; the club also is the model for the “Bodleian Club” in “Baxter’s Procrustes.” Presenters included McElrath, McWilliams, and Duncan, and the book offers essays from Pickens and Nathan Oliver as well.

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  • Wilson, Matthew. Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004.

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    A study primarily of Chesnutt’s novels, including the three published during his life and three of the posthumously published works, although one chapter deals with the nonfiction. Wilson focuses on whiteness as it relates to not only Chesnutt’s conception of it in his texts, but also as the primary definer of his reading audience as well.

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  • Wonham, Henry, ed. Criticism and the Color Line: Desegregating American Literary Studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996.

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    Given the title and approach, there is surprisingly little in this text regarding Chesnutt’s writings. It is, nevertheless, a compelling collection of essays that seeks to transcend “black” or “white” criticism. Most of the essays thus treat multiple writers, often of different racial, chronological, and philosophical backgrounds.

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Reviews

Most of the early reviews of Chesnutt’s work read his works in light of contemporary racial and social attitudes, sometimes in way that might make the modern reader cringe. Unsurprisingly, Howells 1900 and Howells 1901 offer two well-considered takes on Chesnutt as both social (and racial) commenter and also as realist. Cary 1901 and Wright 1901 provide broader, positive commentaries on multiple Chesnutt texts, while the reviewer of “Literature, Music, Art, and Social and Personal Notes” (Anonymous 1899) focuses on the deficiencies of Conjure Woman. “The Book-Buyer’s Guide” (Anonymous 1900) and “Literature” (Anonymous 1899) offer positive reviews of Wife and Conjure Woman, respectively. Both A. E. H. 1901 and Fitch 1901 find much that is laudable in Marrow.

  • A. E. H. “Talk about Books.” Chatauquan 34 (December 1901): 327–328.

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    A review of The Marrow of Tradition. Like Fitch’s review, this one enthusiastically praises Chesnutt and sees the novel as a triumph emerging from the promise of earlier works. This review also focuses on the political thrust of the novel.

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  • Anonymous. “Literature.” Washington D.C. Times, 9 April 1899: 2.

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    A substantial review of The Conjure Woman in which individual stories within that collection are closely read. The reviewer concludes by writing, “Mr. Chesnutt is a colored man, that is one reason why his stories are so good. The other reason is that he knows how to make literature” (p. 2).

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  • Anonymous. “Literature, Music, Art, and Social and Personal Notes.” Richmond Times, 9 July 1899: 9.

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    A review indicting the author of The Conjure Woman for “writing about matters about which he either knows nothing, or concerning which he has, to say the least, very unfortunate and unjust views and ideas” (p. 9). The reviewer concludes by encouraging Chesnutt to use his “legal talent” and writing powers instead to “redress the legislative wrongs and blots of the Reconstruction Period” (p. 9).

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  • Anonymous. “The Book-Buyer’s Guide.” Critic 36 (February 1900): 182.

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    A positive review of The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. Comparing this collection favorably to The Conjure Woman, the reviewer writes, “We have had stories in negro dialect. We are ready to leave the objective for the subjective point of view; we want a consideration of the struggle which has already begun in the North. Therefore this book is timely” (p. 182).

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  • Cary, Elizabeth L. “A New Element in Fiction.” Book Buyer 23 (August 1901): 26–28.

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    An overview of three Chesnutt books (Conjure Woman, Wife, House behind the Cedars) and three of Dunbar’s works. Cary finds Chesnutt’s work psychologically fascinating as a study of class and race.

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  • Fitch, George Hamlin. “There is No Frigate Like a Book.” San Francisco Chronicle, 17 November 1901: 4.

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    A review of The Marrow of Tradition. Fitch praises Chesnutt for his “sure hand” and asserts: “The book is the strongest story of the South that has been written in years, and in its stern unveiling of the sins of slavery it reminds one of Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (p. 4).

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  • Howells, William Dean. “Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt’s Stories.” Atlantic Monthly 85 (May 1900): 699–701.

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    Primarily a review of The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, although Howells also mentions briefly the “artistic reticence” (p. 700) of The Conjure Woman. Howells praises Chesnutt throughout the review. In fact, he offers his highest acclaim for Wife, in which, according to Howells, Chesnutt meets the standard of the realist.

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  • Howells, William Dean. “A Psychological Counter-Current in Recent Fiction.” North American Review 173 (December 1901): 872–888.

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    Howells review of The Marrow of Tradition that is far less complimentary than his review of Wife. Although he finds Chesnutt a writer of whom America can be proud, Howells nevertheless declares: “The book is, in fact, bitter, bitter. . . and yet it would be better if it was not so bitter” (p. 882). McElrath argues that this review evidences Howells’ “disappointment” with Chesnutt.

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  • Wright, John Livingston. “Charles W. Chesnutt.” Colored American Magazine 4 (December 1901): 153–156.

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    An overview of Chesnutt’s publishing career, including commentary on Conjure Woman, Wife, and House behind the Cedars. Wright finds that Chesnutt “is undoubtedly destined to reach a prominent position in American literature” (p. 156).

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Bibliographies

Although no comprehensive bibliography of Chesnutt’s works has yet appeared, good resources are available. Given the recent appearance of new primary materials—novels, essays, and speeches—and the increasing interest in Chesnutt’s life and works, expect more bibliographical work to be forthcoming. For now, see especially Ellison and Metcalf 1977, Andrews 1976a, Andrews 1976b, and Freiermuth 2010.

  • Andrews, William. “Charles Waddell Chesnutt: An Essay in Bibliography.” Resources for American Literary Study 6 (1976a): 3–22.

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    One of Chesnutt’s best commentators, Andrews provides one of the earliest attempts at a Chesnutt bibliography and is a useful starting point.

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  • Andrews, William. “The Works of Charles W. Chesnutt: A Checklist.” Bulletin of Bibliography 34 (1976b): 4–52.

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    Andrews’s second bibliographical essay about Chesnutt provides useful information and is more fully developed. Contains surveys of editions, letters, manuscripts, and varied primary materials.

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  • Ellison, Curtis W., and E. W. Metcalf. Charles W. Chesnutt: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977.

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    An early bibliography of Chesnutt’s works. Arranged chronologically from 1887 through 1975, contains bibliographical information from newspapers, articles, reviews, dissertations, and more. With annotations.

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  • Freiermuth, John M. “An Updated Bibliography of Charles Chesnutt’s Syndicated Newspaper Publications.” American Literary Realism 42.3 (2010): 278–280.

    DOI: 10.1353/alr.0.0053Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Useful gap-filler that delineates a much fuller picture of Chesnutt’s (mostly) early publications in newspapers.

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  • Wonham, Henry B. “What Is a Black Author: A Review of Recent Charles Chesnutt Studies.” American Literary History 18.4 (Winter 2006): 829–835.

    DOI: 10.1093/alh/ajl025Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    As the length of the article makes clear, this is not a comprehensive bibliography, but it is helpful in looking at trends in Chesnutt scholarship; the short version is that it is a growing industry.

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General Overviews of the Era and African American Literature Studies

Despite an explosion in interest in African American literature and an expansion of critical attention paid to Chesnutt, several important texts on the former pay little heed to the latter. Baker 1971 and Davis and Gates 1985 focus surprisingly less on Chesnutt than one might expect; Williamson 1984 too does not explore the extent of Chesnutt’s influence despite the author’s familiarity with the subject. One notable exception is Sundquist 1993. Gates 1987, Petesch 1989, and Wonham 2004 offer good overviews of the emerging critical milieu of African American literature. Gilmore 2010 provides a complex reading of Chesnutt in light of the African American tradition.

  • Baker, Houston A., Jr. Black Literature in America. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1971.

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    Combines a collection of African American literature, including one Chesnutt story (“The Bouquet”), with a general overview of the history and some trends of American black literature.

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  • Davis, Charles T., and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Slave’s Narrative. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

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    A collection of reviews of slave narratives, histories, and commentaries on literature. An interesting introduction to the slave narrative, a centrally important phase of African American literature. Includes an essay by John Edgar Wideman on Chesnutt and the narratives compiled under the Works Progress Administration.

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  • Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

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    One of the early works seeking to bring recent literary theory to the study of African American literature. Gates offers a thoroughgoing history of African American literature and his “theorizing” of it provides an interesting lens through which to view it. Some brief commentary on Chesnutt.

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  • Gilmore, Michael T. The War on Words: Slavery, Race, and Free Speech in American Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

    DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226294155.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Fascinating study of the power slavery and race have on contemporary and subsequent literary productions in America. Contains a provocative chapter on Chesnutt titled “Choking in Chesnutt.”

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  • Petesch, Donald A. A Spy in the Enemy’s Country: The Emergence of Modern Black Literature. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989.

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    Taking its title from Ellison’s Invisible Man, Petesch’s study provides an overview of the beginnings of the African American literary tradition and the subsequent development of a less “confused,” more “positive” expression of the “black self.” The book contains a chapter on Chesnutt’s influence and suggests that a primary strategy of Chesnutt’s “was to adopt for literary purposes the black survival strategy of masking.”

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  • Sundquist, Eric J. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

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    A thorough and provocative reimagining of the American literary tradition and the ways that two seemingly conflicting literatures—the white and the black—have coalesced to form one national literature. In it, Sundquist offers readings of white and black American authors, including Douglass, Melville, DuBois, and Twain, to develop his reevaluation of the American literary landscape. The book devotes a chapter—and a long one at that—to a study of Chesnutt’s use of the cakewalk and other conventions.

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  • Williamson, Joel. The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

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    An examination of the shifting terrain of race relations in the South following the Civil War. Contains a section on Chesnutt that is primarily biographical.

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  • Wonham, Henry B. Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

    DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195161946.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Examines the odd but compelling convergence of literary realism, with its goals of democratic representation, and ethnic stereotypes in even the most complex texts of the late 19th century, including those written by Chesnutt.

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