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American writers, Henry James and Nathaniel Hawthorne, complained bitterly about the bleakness and flatness of the American scene. But I think that if they were alive, they’d feel at home in modern America. True, we have no great church in America; our national traditions are still of such a sort that we are not wont to brag of them; and we have no army that’s above the level of mercenary fighters; we have no group acceptable to the whole of our country upholding certain humane values; we have no rich symbols, no colorful rituals. We have only a money-grubbing, industrial civilization. But we do have in the Negro the embodiment of a past tragic enough to appease the spiritual hunger of even a James; and we have in the oppression of the Negro a shadow athwart out national life dense and heavy enough to satisfy even the gloomy broodings of a Hawthorne. And if Poe were alive, he would not have to invent horror; horror would invent him.

RICHARD WRIGHT.

NEW YORK, MARCH 7, 1940.

Note on the Texts

This volume presents two works by Richard Wright: a novel, Native Son, and an essay on its writing. The text of Native Son is from the completed page proofs, and the text of the essay “How ‘Bigger’ Was Born” is from its first pamphlet publication. This text of Native Son is the last version of the text that Wright prepared without external intervention. A great deal of material pertaining to the publication of these works, including typescripts, page proofs, and correspondence between Wright and his publishers, is contained in the James Weldon Johnson Collection of the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Other significant materials are held in the Fales Collection of the New York University Library and the Firestone Library at Princeton University.

Wright sent an outline for Native Son to Harper and Brothers in February 1938, and delivered the final typescript to Aswell at Harper in June 1939. This copy was prepared by a typist working with Wright from a corrected second draft that included typed changes inserted with paste. This typescript, showing a copy-editor’s markings, is now at the Beinecke Library. The markings generally have to do with capitalization, hyphenation, typographical errors, and changing numerals to words. There are also a few cases where conjunctions have been added or deleted.

Two sets of page proofs for Native Son are known to exist. The first set, in the Fales Collection at New York University, contains markings in various hands, including Wright’s. Apparently this set was corrected by the Harper and Brothers editors and reviewed and approved by Wright. The second, and later, set (Beinecke Library, Zan W936 94C na) shows the earlier corrections now set in type. It is a bound set of page proofs that Harper and Brothers sent to the Book-of-the-Month Club in August 1939. The bound set was originally intended as a reviewer’s copy for the previously announced fall publication, but the interest expressed by the Book-of-the-Month Club caused the publication date to be delayed from month to month while the book club deliberated.

On August 22, 1939, Aswell wrote to Wright: “And incidentally the Book Club wants to know whether, if they do choose Native Son, you would be willing to make some changes in that scene early in the book where Bigger and his friends are sitting in the moving picture theatre. I think you will recognize the scene I mean and will understand why the Book Club finds it objectionable. They are not a particularly squeamish crowd, but that scene, after all, is a bit on the raw side. I daresay you could revise it in a way to suggest what happens rather than to tell it explicitly.”

This scene, as contained in the typescripts, the Fales Collection proofs, and the bound set of proofs, was drastically altered for the published text. Wright rewrote the entire scene, making only passing reference to a newsreel and describing at length a feature film, The Gay Woman. In so doing, he eliminated all mention of Mary Dalton (who is featured in the newsreel in the original scene) and all references to