The Marrow of Tradition: A Norton Critical Edition

By Charles W. Chesnutt

Book Overview

Inspired by the 1898 Wilmington Riot and the eyewitness accounts of Charles W. Chesnutt's own family, Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition captures the astonishing moment in American history when a violent coup d'?tat resulted in the subversion of a free and democratic election.

The Norton Critical Edition text is based on the 1901 first edition. It is accompanied by a note on the text, Werner Sollors's insightful introduction, explanatory annotations, and twenty-four photographs and illustrations.

"Contexts" connects the novel to the historical events in Wilmington and includes a wealth of newspaper articles, editorials, and biographical sketches of the central players.

The account of riot instigator Alfred Moore Waddell, published just weeks after the event, is reprinted, along with three rarely seen letters: W. E. B. Du Bois's and Booker T. Washington's comments on the novel and Walter Hines Page's letter to Chesnutt. Rounding out the historical record is a selection of 1890s sheet music, a poem, and newspaper articles on the Cakewalk, a popular dance of the period with roots in slavery.

"Criticism" begins with twelve contemporary reviews, including those by Hamilton Wright Mabie, Katherine Glover, William Dean Howells, and Sterling A. Brown. Fifteen recent assessments focus on the novel's characters, history, realism, and violence. As scholarship on The Marrow of Tradition and on Wilmington in 1898 has been especially active since the 1990s, ten assessments are from this period.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393934144
• ISBN13: 9780393934144
• Release Date: August 1970
• Publisher: Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.1" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 15 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 10 and higher

Customer Reviews

A compelling, engaging story of characters and events

Masterfully narrated by Michael Collins, the historical novel, The Marrow Of Tradition, by Charles Waddell Chesnutt is set in the 1898 North Carolina city of Wellington, presenting a kind of microcosm of the ante-bellum south where a town has gone mad with racial hatreds, and roiling confrontations between southern "redeemers" and the now free black community. The first African-American novelist to achieve national recognition for his work, Charles Waddell Chesnutt is able to take us back into a time of family tragedy, death, lynch law, and endemic racial violence that would scar the worlds of both whites and blacks for generations to come. The Marrow Of Tradition is a compelling, engaging story of characters and events that grips the listener's total attention from beginning to end. (Running Time: 3:30 hours)

Tradition and Justice

This Chesnutt novel is one of the most powerful fictional works about the nature of race relations published in the era of the Jim Crow South. It carefully relates issues of the "separate but equal" doctrine, Southern tradition and class distinctions, mob justice and lynching, generational shifts in race relations, and a number of other problems in an interesting narrative account of the Wilmington race riot. Chesnutt's style, powerful nuances, and memorable characters make this novel an essential read for anyone interested in the history of race relations in America.

A melodramatic yet poignant tale for current times

This novel, originally published in 1901, is based on a historic event from 1898, a racially based incident in which about a dozen African Americans in Wilmington, North Carolina, were brutally murdered by Caucasians who'd lost political power, after Reconstruction, and successfully gained that power back by massacring some and completely intimidating all of the other African Americans in that community. Chesnutt, however, does not simply retell the story of the "race riot" but uses that event as the basis for a story about the tensions between peoples of different "races" and the disenfranchisement of African Americans at the initiation of Jim Crow Laws. This is an interesting read, and excellent for the classroom, particularly when thinking about using fiction as the basis to teach students to do research. There are three editions: two are good and the third should be ignored completely. Buy the 20th Cent. Classics edition (edited by Sundquist) or the Univ. of Michigan/Ann Arbor Paperback edition (edited by Farnsworth). Do NOT buy the Black Classics/X-Press version; it is a sham. The publishers have changed the title to Tradition and have left out portions of the novel, sometimes just phrases and other times whole paragraphs. The Black Classics/X-Press edition is a different read completely and should NOT be ordered.

A very important novel to better understand racism.

Do not let the original publication date fool you. This novel could easily have been written yesterday. The themes are timely, and the action is exciting. You will see for yourself how much and how little society has changed. This book is a real page-turner.