CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
HELEN C. MOORE

CHESNUTT & MOORE

SHORTHAND REPORTERS

1646 UNION TRUST BLDG.

CLEVELAND

March 1, 1930

Mr. Walter F. White,
90 Edgecombe Avenue,
New York, N. Y.

My dear Walter:

I see from a newspaper item that you have been raised to the rank of the immortals, like Rousseau, Voltaire, Boccaccio, Theodore Dreisser and others too numerous to mention, by having a couple of your books banned by the Boston censors. If this statement is true, I hope it will make them sell better than ever.

I presume you read the article in the January Bookman by Mr. John Chamberlain, on Negro writers. I don't know the gentleman's standing as a critic, though I understand he is on the staff of the New York Times Literary Review, but I am glad to see that he gives you and me perhaps the highest place among the colored writers.

I am awfully sorry that Houghton Mifflin Company stopped the publication of my books, as the "uncovering" of them and of me by Carl Van Vechten and others following him might have resulted in the sale of a good many more of them. The new "Conjure Woman" has done very well indeed, and, according to the publishers, has quite justified its reissue, and I hope to persuade them to bring out a new edition of "The House Behind the Cedars".

Give my regards to Mrs. White, whom I am still hoping to meet. I should probably have been in New York this winter, but the decline in the stock market knocked off a large part of the value of my small holdings, and I have felt too poor to spend the money. However, I will get around to it some time.

CWC:ES