With no formal training in literature, Charles Waddell Chesnutt became the first black American writer to receive major critical attention from literary critics. Writing during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he is most noted for his portrayal of life among the inhabitants of the Cape Fear River area of North Carolina, and was among the first writers to create characters, black or white, that did not fit any previous stereotypic pattern.

This volume of ten anecdotes, nine tales, and twenty-nine short stories includes all but four of Chesnutt's pieces of short fiction - excluding the tales and short stories in "The Conjure Woman" and "The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line". Among the anecdotes are 'A Tight Boot' and 'An Eloquent Apeal'; the tales, 'The Marked Tree' and 'The Dumb Witness'; and the short stories, 'A Limb of Satan' and 'A Grass Widow'. The editor's introduction provides critical analyses of Chesnutt bibliography of Chesnutt's fiction available.

Edited and with Introduction by Sylvia Lyons Render

First published 1974 by Howard University Press

Revised paperback edition 1981