The Marrow of Tradition (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

The Marrow of Tradition (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

Based on a historically accurate account of the Wilmington, North Carolina, "race riot" of 1898, African-American author Charles W. Chesnutt's innovative novel is a passionate portrait of the betrayal of black culture in America.  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. "Chesnutt was tremendously explicit in representing the violence and his own anger. Today it reads as one of the more enduring novels of the era." —Richard Yarborough , UCLA 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.