Richard Wright letters to Margaret Ellen Barnes, 1938-1940.

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Richard Wright letters to Margaret Ellen Barnes, 1938-1940.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/702183402

Collection consists of 53 letters, chiefly typed letters signed, from Wright to Margaret Ellen Barnes of Oberlin, Ohio. Wright's correspondence to Barnes dates from May 1938 to March 1939, during which time he was living in New York and writing Native Son, and letters detail progress on the novel. Wright also discusses literature and publishing, books he is reading, his identity as a writer and African-American, Chicago and Harlem, his social life and politics, WWII, and his health and financial concerns, among other subjects. Wright also comments on poems by Barnes, offers advice to the young writer, and replies to discussion in letters from Barnes (not present) about life in Oberlin. Accompanied by clippings, dating from 1940, and Guggenheim fellowship application material, including plans for work on Native Son.

0.42 linear feet (2 boxes)

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 8026206

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Related Entities

There are 3 Entities related to this resource.

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1959

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6z35mwj (corporateBody)

Wright, Richard, 1908-1960

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6df6vk8 (person)

Richard Nathaniel Wright was born September 4, 1908 near Natchez, Mississippi, to Ella Wilson Wright, a schoolteacher, and Nathan Wright, a sharecropper. The story of Richard Wright's childhood, with its harrowing episodes of abandonment by his father, his temporary consignment to an orphanage after his mother became ill, and his short-lived schooling under the harsh guardianship of his grandmother have been detailed in his autobiography, Black Boy (published in 1945 by Harper & Row)....

Barnes, Margaret Ellen.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6697nwz (person)