RICHARD WRIGHT: Critical Perspectives Past and Present.

[Wright, Richard, 1908-1960] Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, editors.

ISBN 10: 1567430279 / ISBN 13: 9781567430271

Published by Amistad / Harper Collins, 1993

About this Item

First printing, a trade paperback, issued simultaneously with hardcover. Includes 20 reviews of Wright's novels and other books and 22 critical essays on his works; the reviewers include Joyce Cary, Max Eastman, Clifton Fadiman, Zora Neale Hurston, Sinclair Lewis, Ralph Ellison, Horace A. Porter, Lionel Trilling, David Bradley and others. Essays by Dan McCall, Claudia C. Tate, Robert Stepto, Herbert Leibowitz, Houston A Baker and more. Preface by Gates. SIGNED by K. A. Appiah on the title page. One of the first six volumes of literary criticism launching the Amistad Literary series, which is devoted to literary fiction and criticism by and about African Americans. Chronology, bibliography and index. xvi, 476 pp. Very near fine in glossy illustrated wrappers. Seller Inventory # 72960

Bibliographic Details

Title: RICHARD WRIGHT: Critical Perspectives Past ...

Publisher: Amistad / Harper Collins

Publication Date: 1993

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: FINE

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Richard Wright

(1908 -- 1960)

Of the numerous achievements that distinguish Richard Wright's place in the history of American literature, perhaps none is more important than the fact that he was the first African-American writer to sustain himself professionally from his writings alone. Primarily through the success of Native Sonand Black Boy, Wright was able to support, for two decades, a comfortable life for himself and his family in Paris. He also became, with the publication of Native Sonalone, the first internationally celebrated Black American author. If one had to identify the single most influential shaping force in modern Black literary history, one would probably have to point to Wright and the publication of Native Son,his first and most successful novel.

-- from the Preface by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

About the Author:

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored seventeen books and created fourteen documentary films. Having written for such leading publications as The New Yorker, the New York Times, and Time, Professor Gates now serves as chairman of the daily online magazine The Root and is editor in chief of the Oxford African American Studies Center. He has received more than fifty honorary degrees from institutions the world over.