The Conjure Stories

Introduction

A Note on the Texts

THE TEXTS OF THE CONJURE STORIES

The Goophered Grapevine
Po' Sandy
The Conjurer's Revenge
Dave's Neckliss
A Deep Sleeper
Lonesome Ben
The Dumb Witness
A Victim of Heredity; or, Why the Darkey Loves Chicken
The Gray Wolf's Ha'nt
Mars Jeems's Nightmare
Sis' Becky's Pickaninny
Tobe's Tribulations
Hot-Foot Hannibal
The Marked Tree

CONTEXTS

Sarah Ingle • The Terrain of Chesnutt's Conjure Tales
Charles W. Chesnutt • From His Journal, Spring 1880

• [Why could not a colored man . . . write a far better book about the South?]
• [I think I must write a book]

William Wells Brown • [Voudooism in Missouri]
Joel Chandler Harris • The Sad Fate of Mr. Fox
Ovid • The Transformation of Daphne into a Laurel
Charles W. Chesnutt • Letters to Albion W. Tourgée and George Washington Cable

• To Tourgée, Sept. 26, 1889
• To Cable, March 29, 1890
• To Cable, June 13, 1890

Paul Laurence Dunbar • The Deserted Plantation
Charles W. Chesnutt • Superstitions and Folk-lore of the South

• The Free Colored People of North Carolina
• Adaptation of "The Dumb Witness"
• The Negro in Art: How Shall He Be Portrayed?
• Post-Bellum-Pre-Harlem

CRITICISM

EARLY CRITICISM

Critical Notices of The Conjure Woman
William Dean Howells • Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt's Stories
Benjamin Brawley • [Fiction with a Firm Sense of Art]
Helen M. Chesnutt • Chesnutt and Walter Hines Page

MODERN CRITICISM

Robert Hemenway • [Black Magic, Audience, and Belief]
William L. Andrews • [A Critique of the Plantation Legend]
Robert B. Stepto • [The Cycle of the First Four Stories]
John Edgar Wideman • [Julius's Ex-Slave Narrative]
Werner Sollors • [Reason, Property, and Modern Metamorphoses]
Houston A. Baker Jr. • [The Sound of the Conjure Stories]
Eric J. Sundquist • [Chesnutt's Revision of Uncle Remus]
Richard H. Brodhead • [Chesnutt's Negotiation with the Dominant Literary Culture]
Candace J. Waid • Conjuring the Conjugal: Chesnutt's Scenes from a Marriage
Glenda Carpio • [Black Humor in the Conjure Stories]
Charles W. Chesnutt: A Chronology

Selected Bibliography