798

MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE

August 1913

and indomitably social, she not only likes people of all sorts and conditions, like her at first sight, and like her to the end, even if she has any very good qualities of present day life."

by
Brander Mathews
Professor of Dramatic Literature in
Columbia University

on
The
Autobiography
of an
Ex-Colored Man
Anonymous

Cloth; 8vo; $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35

Sherman, French & Company
Publishers
6 Beacon Street
Boston, Mass.

book which purports to be an actual record of fact, but which seems to me to fall rather within Green's definition of fiction. This is an anonymous volume entitled "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man."

The title is a little startling, but the book itself is not in the least sensational. It tells in detail the life of a young fellow of mixed blood, who is, in fact, almost white, and who in the end abandons his darker brethren and passes thereafter as a white man. He records his own feeling that he is a de-serter to the cause of the negro, and he sets forth his high esteem for the men who are now maintaining that cause.

"Beside them I feel small and selfish—" he declares. "I am an ordinarily successful white man who has made a little money, they are men who are making history and a race."

That the story of this ex-colored man's career, from his childhood to his maturity, with its many episodes in many cities, was written by a colored man is indisputable, and it is therefore also a contribution to the history of American life and manners. It takes us into many circles, the existence of which is unknown to white readers; it gives, for example, a fleeting vision of the colored "Tenderloin" of New York. It may not be a record of actual fact, but it contains what is higher than actual fact, the essential truth. It has indisputable veracity, even if it is imagined rather than recollected.

It has significance for all of us who want to understand our fellow citizens of darker hue. It is written calmly, clearly, simply, in fact, it is composed in full accord with the principle enunciated by Taine in one of his letters—the principle "that a writer should be a psychologist, not a painter or a musician, that he should be a transmitter of ideas and of feelings, not of sensations."

Here, then, are three serious studies of American character in the form of fiction, and in no one of these three books is there any plot, so called, or any exciting situation, or anything that could be put on the stage or that suggests the stage. If Robert Louis Stevenson was right in declaring that the serious drama must deal with the great passionate crises of existence, "when duty and inclination come nobly to the grapple," then no one of these stories is really dramatic. Yet by one reader at least they have been found intensely interesting, because they are rich in human nature.

"History without documents— nothing to prove it."

A CURIOUS PHASE OF LIFE

Mr. Howells's book and Mr. Herrick's, each in its own way, is a contribution to the history of American life and manners. With them I wish to class another book not so recently issued and not so widely read, a

CHICAGO, ILL.
POST

JUN 10 1927

"THE AUTobiography of an Ex-Colored Man," by James Weldon Johnson, will appear about the middle of August, at the same time "The Journal of Katherine Mans-

field," both, of course, from the house of Alfred Knopf. A little earlier in that month there will appear from the same house, "Wolf Song," by Harvey Ferguson, whose other books of the older southwest and Mexico have been more than good.

New York Evening Sun

AUG 6 1927

On August 19 Alfred A. Knopf will publish "The End of a World," by Claude Anet; "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man," by James Weldon Johnson; "Manchu Blood" and "Fo' Meals a Day," by Hugh Wiley; "The Search for Atlantis," by Edwin Bjorkman; "Rustic Elegies," by Edith Sitwell, and "Book Reviewing," by Wayne Gard.

NEW YORK
N. Y.
**TELEGRAPH**
ISSUE OF

AUG 7 - 1927

James Weldon Johnson, whose "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" is on the Knopf Fall list, is working through the Summer, taking his vacation in week-ends, when he goes to his farm in Great Barrington, Mass.; Thyra Samter Winslow, author of "People Round the Corner," is also too busy to take an extended holiday, and is playing only week-ends; Walter Brooks, author of the delightful juvenile, "To And Again," is at his desk every day, but goes on week-ends to his cabin in the Adirondacks; Emory Holloway, author of "Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative," which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biog- raphy published in 1926, retired to his shack at Meddybamps, Maine, where he is writing industriously as well as fishing; and Emily Clark, whose Southern sketches, "Stuffed Peacocks" will be brought out by Knopf in the Fall, is off to Europe for book material.

From this it would seem that
writers work even when they play.

DALLAS, TEX.
NEWS
Times

AUG 7 - 1927

James Weldon Johnson, whose "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" is on the Knopf fall list, is working through the summer, taking his vacation in week-ends, when he goes to his farm in Great Barrington, Mass.; Thyra Samter Winslow, author of "People Round the Corner," is also too busy to take an extended holiday, and is playing only week-ends; Walter Brooks, author of the delightful ju- venile "To And Again," is at his desk every day, but goes on week- ends to his cabin in the Adiron- dacks; Emory Holloway, author of "Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative," which was awarded the Pulitzer prize for biography pub- lished in 1926, retired to his shack on the coast of Maine, where he is writing industriously as well as fishing; and Emily Clark, whose Southern sketches, "Stuffed Pea- cocks," will be brought out by Knopf in the Fall, is off to Europe for book material.

PRESS
SAVANNAH, GA.

AUG 13 1927

This week, August 19 to be ex- act, will see a new edition of James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobi- graphy of An Ex-Colored Man." The new edition of this significant book will have an Introduction by Carl Van Vechten and will be one of the Alfred Knopf Blue Jade Li- brary Series.

THE LOUISVILLE NEWS
Aug. 13, 1927

J. W. JOHNSON'S NOVEL
APPEARS IN NEW EDITION

Carl Van Vechten Writes In-
troduction to "Autobiography
of An Ex-Colored Man.

NEW YORK, Aug. 10—James Weldon Johnson's novel, "The Autobiography of an E-Colored Man," first published in 1912 and since then out of print, has just been re-published in New York, by Alfred A. Knopf in the Blue Jade library ser- ies, with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten.

Mr. Van Vechten declares he has read the book three times and says "that it reads like a composite auto-biography of the Negro race in the United States in modern times."

N.Y. EVENING POST

19 AUGUST 1927

The Knopf list for today is well varied. James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiog- raphy of an Ex-Colored Man" is now in- cluded in the Blue Jade Series and I shall have more to say soon of this remarkable book. There is another novel by Claude Anet, author of "Arlane" and "While" the Earth Shook," this one called "The End of the World"; a book of three long poems by Edith Sitwell, "Rustic Elegies"; an odd volume by Edwin Bjorkman, "The Search for Atlantis," and a study of the whole field of book reviewing in America by Wayne Gard, who is an instructor of jour- nalism at Grinnell College, which bears the simple title, "Book Reviewing."

NEWS
GALVESTON, TEX.

AUG 14 1927

Late this month Alfred A. Knopf will publish as the newest volume in the Blue Jade Library James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobi- graphy of an Ex-Colored Man." First published anonymously in 1912 by a Boston firm which went out of business during the war, "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" has been out of print for some years. The Blue Jade Library edition will be prefaced by an in- troduction by Carl Van Vechten.

JOURNAL

Minneapolis, Minn.

AUG 2 - 1927

AMES WELDON JOHNSON, who is the author of "The Auto- biography of an Ex-Colored Man," has been for many years an author on American jazz music. His brother is J. Rosamond Johnson, well known musician, composer, and sing- er and arranger of Negro spirituals. The two brothers, when they were teaching school in Florida, wrote an operetta together for amusement.

THE CRISIS

September, 1927

THE NEGRO

as author and

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF AN
EX-COLOURED
MAN

By James Weldon Johnson

*With an Introduction by Carl Van Vechten*

A rare, much-sought source-book about Negro life in America, first published anonymously in 1912, and at length made really accessible. In its account of inter-racial contacts, especially in the South, it is still probably the wisest, most restrained, and most comprehensive thing on its subject. There are passages which, once read, can never be forgotten—notably, among others, that on a lynching in the South. In short, here is a novel which is not fiction—and which is, by any standard, literature.
$3.00

Alfred A. Knopf

In Canada, from The Macmillan Company of

as subject

NIGGER HEAVEN

By

Carl Van Vechten

Recognized in every quarter, including the colored press, as the portrayal of contemporary life in Harlem.

Twelfth large printing. $2.50

THE WEARY BLUES

FINE CLOTHES TO THE JEW

By Langston Hughes

Two volumes of poems that belong most poignantly to the race. Others appreciate them as literature, and realize that they are good. But the Negro himself knows that their substance is his very birthright.

Each, $2.00

AT ALL BOOKSHOPS OR FROM THE CRISIS

Publisher, New York

Canada, Ltd., St. Martin's House, Toronto

HARTFORD, CONN.
TIMES

AUG 20 1927

To-day Alfred A. Knopf published "The End of a World," by Claude Anet; "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man," by James Weldon Johnson; "Manchu Blood" and "To Meals a Day," by Hugh Wiley; "The Search for Atlantis," by Edwin Bjorkman; "Rustic Elegies," by Edith Sitwell; and "Book Reviewing," by Wayne Gard.

DALLAS, TEX.
NEWS

AUG 20 1927

This week—Aug. 19, to be exact, will see a new edition of James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man." The new edition of this significant book will have an introduction by Carl Van Vechten and will be one of the Alfred Knopf Blue Jade Library Series.

N. Y. C. HERALD TRIBUNE

AUGUST 21, 1927

worldliness and sophistication.

THE END OF A WORLD. By Claude Anet. Knopf. A romance set in the last cycle of the Cro-Magnon period.

THREE WIVES. By Beatrice Kean Seymour. Knopf. The marriages of three women taken as typical.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN. By James Weldon Johnson. Knopf. Reprint of a story reflecting the problems of the Negro.

RUBIES. By Louis Moresby. Dorn. A thrilling story of smugglers by L. Adams Beck, alias E. Barrington.

THE HOUSE OF FULFILLMENT. By L. Adams Beck. Cosmopolitan. "The romance of a soul."

SLAG. By John McIntyre. Scribners. "Its characters are the slag of the human furnace—the great city."

20 1927

AUG 19TH PUBLICATIONS

19 Alfred A. Knopf will publish "The World," by Claude Anet; "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man," by James Weldon Manchu Blood" and "Fo' Meals a Day," by "The Search for Atlantis," by Edith Sitwell; "Rustic Elegies," by Edith Sitwell; Reviewing," by Wayne Gard.

THE WASHINGTON EAGLE, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1927

AS IN A LOOKING GLASS

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

WHEN the "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" appeared anonymously some fifteen years ago, the furore that it created was tempered by the feeling that it was either written by a white man, was pure fiction, or the work of a Negro who had deliberately bared the secrets of the race to the prying eyes of non-Negroes. Later we found out that while it was pure fiction, yet it might easily have been literal truth, and the passage of years has made us less hyper-sensitive about racial matters. So the re-publication of the "Autobiography," under the name of the author, James Weldon Johnson, by Alfred A.

Knopf in the Blue Jade series has caused a recurrence of the old furore, and we re-read the book with increased interest in the light of the present-day glorification of Harlem.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the New York of the days mentioned in the book, when Negro life was down town in the Thirties, and there were no cabarets, only night clubs; when Ada Overton Walker was the darling of the race; when jazz was unknown and rag-time wa sgaining a foothold; when Harlem was a day's journey into the hinterland, will find a renewed interest and delight in the life described in one section of the book. But apart from the purely fictitious tale, or the study of the mental processes of the man who decides to "go over," the autobiography has two distinct claims upon our interest. The tale itself in the light of present day accomplishment, sounds almost late-Victorian. But the manner of telling, in its bald, terse cold, almost impersonal clarity reminds one involuntarily of Booker Washington's "Up From Slavery." There is much of the same style throughout both narratives—the true and the fictitious one. So that you know that the autobiography is quite what Carl Van Vechten claims for it, in his introduction—"a composite autobiography of the Negro race in the United States in modern times." The other claim upon our interest lies in the descriptions which Mr. Johnson has elaborated lately in his "God's Trombones," and the introductions to his two editions of the Negro Spirituals. Here we find "Singing Johnson," and the great preacher John Brown, whom we have learned to know from the later books. A vast wealth of unmined material still lies for Mr. Johnson to bring to light, polished and carved as only he knows how.

The big thought of the book lies now as it did fifteen years ago, when the supposed writer recalling his life as a white man says in the last sentence—"I cannot repress the thought that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage."

N. Y. C. NEW YORKER

SEPTEMBER 3, 1927

nomenon, the American Woman of today.

A MUCH needed reprint is "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man," by James Weldon Johnson, which first appeared anonymously fifteen years ago, and has been out of print for almost as many years. Carl Van Vechten in his introduction acknowledges it to be "an invaluable source-book for the study of negro psychology," and points out a number of features which show the author to have anticipated later developments, especially his remarks on spirituals and ragtime. The hero, who passes the color line, succeeds in presenting, directly or indirectly, the various phases and problems of negro life, and no time could be more propitious than the present for an exposition of this kind. What once may have been a matter of academic curiosity is now a social necessity for those who combine in a like enthusiasm Ethel Waters and Walter White, Paul Robeson and Florence Mills. Perhaps Mr. Johnson will enable some of them to draw distinctions.

* * *

Nephews of Uncle Remus

Independent Weekly Review

By Wallace Thurman

New York

September 24, 1927

more of

IT is too bad that negro literature and literary material have had to be exploited by fad finders and sentimentalists. Too bad that the ballyhoo brigade which fostered the so-called negro art "renaissance" has chosen to cheer and encourage indiscriminately anything which claims a negroid ancestry or kinship. For as the overfed child gags when forced to swallow an extra spoonful of half-sour milk, so will the gullible American public gag when too much of this fervid fetish known as negro art is shoveled into its gaping minds and mouths, and the Afro-American artist will find himself as unchampioned and as unimpressive as he was before Carl Van Vechten commenced caroling of his charms in *Vanity Fair*, and the *Survey Graphic* discovered the "new negro" in 1924. Less so; for even in the prerenissance days any negro who achieved something in literature was regarded with wonderment even by the emancipated white intellectuals. But now so many negroes have written a book or a story or a poem that the pale-faced public is no longer astonished by such phenomena.

There has, of course, been some compensation. Negroes have become more articulate and more coherent in their cries for social justice, and they have also begun to appreciate the advantages of racial solidarity and individual achievement. But speaking purely of the arts, the results of the renaissance have been sad rather than satisfactory, in that critical standards have been ignored, and the measure of achievement

The majesty and eloquence of the sermon poems included therein, especially "Go Down Death," are searing and unforgettable. In these poems Mr. Johnson has been the artist rather than the propagandist, and "God's Trombones" will be remembered long after the "Autobiography" has been forgotten, even by sentimental white folk and Jeremiah-like negroes.

COUNTEE CULLEN has published three volumes, "Color," "Copper Sun," and "The Ballad of the Brown Girl," all of which tend to convince the critical investigator that although Mr. Cullen can say things beautifully and impressively, he really has nothing new to say, nor no new way in which to say it. He follows the tradition of a literary poet. His lyrics of love and death are reminiscent of Keats, Housman, and Edna Millay, and one gets the impression that Mr. Cullen writes not from his own experience, but from vicarious literary experiences which are not intense enough to be real and vital. His poetry is not an escape from life in the big sense,

has been racial rather than literary. This is supposed to be valuable in a social way, for it is now current that the works produced by negro artists will form the clauses in a second emancipation proclamation, and that because of the negro artists and their works, the Afro-American will reap new fruits of freedom. But this will be true only inasmuch as the negro artist produces dignified and worth-while work. Quick, tricky, atmospheric bits will be as ephemeral as they are sensational, and sentimental propaganda, unless presented in a style both vigorous and new, will have the effect of bird shot rather than that of shrapnel. Which is to say that the negro will not be benefited by mediocre and ephemeral works, even if they are hailed by well-meaning, but for the moment, simple-minded, white critics as works of genius.

There is a constant controversy being waged as to whether or not there can be in America something specifically known as negro literature. One school says yes, pointing out the fact that there are inherent differences between whites and blacks which will cause the artistic works of the two groups to be distinctly different. The other school contends that there can be no such thing in America as an individual negro literature; that the Afro-American is different from the white American in only one respect, namely, skin color, and that when he writes he will observe the same stylistic conventions and literary traditions.
This latter school

> A "dash of color" is so much the literary fad that critics have become enthusiastic over negro writers out of all proportion to their worth. Wallace Thurman, editor of "Fire," a magazine devoted to negro art and literature, largely debunks this cult of the primitive spirit introduced into American writing by colored authors, and judges the negro's contribution by sober critical standards and common sense

It is almost a certainty that Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes know full well that there are perhaps a half dozen young white poets in these United States doing just as good if not better work than they, and who are not being acclaimed by the public or pursued by publishers purely because a dash of color is the style in literary circles today.

If the negro writer is to make any appreciable contribution to American literature it is necessary that he be considered as a sincere artist trying to do dignified work rather than as a highly trained dog doing trick dances in a public square. He is, after all, motivated and controlled by the same forces which motivate and control a white writer, and like him he will be mediocre or good, succeed or fail as his ability deserves. A man's complexion has little to do with his talent. He either has it or has it not, and despite the dictates of spiritually starved white sophisticates genius does not automatically descend upon one because one's grandmother happened to be sold down the river "befo' de wah."

Nephews expositors.

Independent Weekly Review

izing ever more
that a vast cluster work

New York

So though he sich he sember 24, 1925 no
his hands were often
hc could not help grappling with issue
himself from the meanness and crabbedness of the
Yankee and the harsh illiberalism of the Puritan,
but he was still subject to the Puritan's righteous
indignation and was unwilling on occasion to keep
it to himself.

Mr. Van Wyck Brooks, in his "Emerson and Others," abandons the psychoanalysis to which he submitted Mark Twain and Henry James to adopt, at the farthest extreme from this, the method of the portrait painter. He presents his subject in six poses: at the club, projecting and working for the *Dial*, among the reformers, at his desk, on the lecture rostrum, and in Concord. There is no exposition of Emerson, no legends under the pictures. Out of the "Journals," 5,600 pages of them, the contour of the man has been drawn. And the sketches portray everything that belongs to Emerson except his repose. They have Emerson's energy, but they are like moving pictures that have been so speeded up by an inexpert operator that a normal walk is converted into an ambulatory agitation across the screen.

YET the essential man is there, more human
and informal than in the critical analysis of
Mumford and Parrington, and lending distinction
to his time and place because all the objects of the
universe converge on him as he passes along be-
tween the eternities; not so indomitable — for that
suggests spectacular heroism — as incorrigible, in
his own homely dignity. "He would listen to no
more reproofs, but steadily persist in his own native
choices against all argument and example — defend
them against the multitude, defend them against
the wise. Defend them against his disciples. By no

I, a large order of son marks high noon in
my days as "The Mr. Parrington in his wide
study of the sages of American thought the Con-
cord sage is not quite so important, though he seems
a dominant figure in the romantic revolution, a
"thinker loose in the America of Daniel Webster."
Mr. Mumford, being philosophically minded, re-
gards him as preëminently a philosopher. Mr.
Parrington, who is politically minded, estimates him
as a philosopher too little recognized for his trench-
ancy as a critic. They disagree in no essential though
they differ in emphasis.

To Mr. Parrington Emerson is interesting for his
own emancipations — from the Puritanism which
had begotten him, from the bookishness into which
he grew up, from a contentment with transcendental
aphorisms to an inclination to apply these aphorisms
to the life of his own day, setting the ideal on
one side of the scale and his native New England
on the other and bidding his neighbors see how the
balance tipped.

Emerson's political theory, like his philosophy,
proves to be unformulated in set statements, though
implicitly to be aligned against coercive government
of any sort. He feared an energetic government as a
source of potential tyranny; he rejected an economic
interpretation of the state which set property above
or in rivalry with human life. For these reasons he
preferred an agrarian to an industrial order, and in
his belief in the reduction of state powers to lowest
terms and the recognitions of the rights of man,
he was a Jeffersonian heir to the romantic politics
of the Eighteenth Century.

This, which is a matter of pertinent inquiry, is
actually less important than what Mr. Parrington
reminds us of, and what many never knew, that, in
measuring what he saw in the light of what he be-
lieved, Emerson was capable of plain speaking,
included therein, especially Go Down Death,
searing and unforgettable. In these poems Mr. John-
son has been the artist rather than the propagandist,
and "God's Trombones" will be remembered long
after the "Autobiography" has been forgotten, even
by sentimental white folk and Jeremiah-like negroes.

COUNTEE CULLEN has published three vol-
umes, "Color," "Copper Sun," and "The Ballad
of the Brown Girl," all of which tend to convince
the critical investigator that although Mr. Cullen can
say things beautifully and impressively, he really
has nothing new to say, nor no new way in which to
say it. He follows the tradition of a literary poet.
His lyrics of love and death are reminiscent of
Keats, Housman, and Edna Millay, and one gets the
impression that Mr. Cullen writes not from his own
experience, but from vicarious literary experiences
which are not intense enough to be real and vital.
His poetry is not an escape from life in the big sense,

Neph

Independent Weekly Review

N

New York

would have been more than a large order when one remembers such stories as "The Vampire Bat" and "The Black Pin."

Rudolph Fisher has written one very good short story of negro life in Harlem, and a few more which, while vivid with local color, are weak in other respects. "The City of Refuge," which appeared in the *Atlantic Monthly* almost three years ago, and was later incorporated in "The New Negro," that handbook of the renaissance edited by Alain Locke, was one of the first short stories written by a negro about negroes which did not follow the conventional formula. It told the story of a Southern negro's coming to Harlem, the city of refuge, and of his struggles to adapt himself to a strange and complex environment. Here was drama of a new order, drama and color and life, a story as good as it was unusual. One waits expectantly for Mr. Fisher's first novel.

There are many more negro writers who could be discussed in detail if the space allowed. Zora Neale Hurston is a good story-teller, but an indifferent craftsman. Walter White and Jessie Fauset have produced nothing out of the ordinary, or very good. James Weldon Johnson belongs to the elder generation of negro writers, as his "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man," recently reissued by Knopf, will prove. Despite Carl Van Vechten's enthusiastic introduction, there seems to be no real reason for reprinting this volume in the Blue Jade Library. It is well written, yes, and the author predicts the popularity of ragtime, but its content seems uninspired and stereotyped. Fifteen years ago it might have been a little more than just a well-written book; today it merely makes one wonder why the author didn't call it the autobiography of a colored man rather than that of an ex-colored man. Mr. Johnson's "God's Trombones" is of a different species. The majesty and eloquence of the sermon poems included therein, especially "Go Down Death," are searing and unforgettable. In these poems Mr. Johnson has been the artist rather than the propagandist, and "God's Trombones" will be remembered long after the "Autobiography" has been forgotten, even by sentimental white folk and Jeremiah-like negroes.

but from the narrow world of cage, and from which he set on September 24, 1926 no great effort to escape.

Undoubtedly Mr. Cullen has more talent than any of his colored contemporaries. What he lacks is originality of theme and treatment, and the contact with life necessary to have had actual, rather than vicarious, emotional experiences. He is still young, and perhaps when some of the fanfare aroused when it was discovered that a negro could write beautiful conventional verse has died down, he will be able to work out his own destiny. He has far to go if only he is given the chance and stimulation.

IN a recent issue of *Opportunity*, journal of negro life, there are reviews of two recent books. Both of the reviewers were white poets, both books were by negro poets. The first was of Countee Cullen's "Copper Sun," and in dithyrambic prose the reviewer went to every possible verbal excess in praising the volume. According to him Countee Cullen is *the* thing in American poetry—he equals Housman and surpasses Edna Millay. There is more such lyric nonsense, all done in good faith, no doubt, but of no value whatsoever either to Mr. Cullen or to the race to which he belongs. The second review, while less turgid and more restrained, was excessive in its praise of "God's Trombones," and in neither piece was there any constructive criticism or intelligent evaluation.

These two reviews are typical of the attitude of a certain class of white critics toward negro writers. Urged on by their desire to do what in their opinion is a "service," they dispense with all intelligence and let their sentimentality run riot. Fortunately, most of the younger negro writers realize this and, as most negroes have always done, are laughing up their sleeves at the antics of their nordic patronizers. It is almost a certainty that Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes know full well that there are perhaps a half dozen young white poets in these United States doing just as good if not better work than they, and who are not being acclaimed by the public or pursued by publishers purely because a dash of color is the style in literary circles today.

["NEW YORKER", "SEP 1 0 1927", "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, by James Weldon Johnson (Knopf). A pioneering study of negro psychology now first issued over the author's name.", "Springfield, Ill.", "SEP 1 1 1927", "James Weldon Johnson, author of \"The Auto-biography of an Ex-Colored Man,\" just published, has been for many years an authority on American jazz music. His brother is J. Rosamund Johnson, composer, and arranger of negro spirituals. The two brothers when they were teaching school in Florida, wrote an operaetta together for amusement. It turned out to be so good that they took it to New York in 1901. George Lederer, Lillia Russell, May Irwin, and Oscar Hammerstein became interested in the two musicians and though this particular composition did not receive the compliment of stage-production, connections with Klaw and Erlanger that lasted several years were formed. James Weldon Johnson was United States consul to Venezuela and later served as consul at Corinto, Nicaragua. He is secretary of the National Society for the Advancement of Colored People and in 1925 was awarded the Springarm medal.", "NEW YORKER", "SEP 1 7 1927", "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, by James Weldon Johnson (Knopf). A pioneering study of negro psychology now first issued over the author's name.", "NEW YORKER", "SEP 2 4 1927", "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, by James Weldon Johnson (Knopf). A pioneering study of negro psychology now first issued over the author's name.", "THE NEW YORKER", "September 24, 1927", "BOOKS WORTH READING", "We Recommend:", "FICTION", "(The first book in this list is reviewed in Recent Books, dd. 94-97.)", "(Knopf). A most original picture of the spacious days of Queen Bess in relation to the literati of the time, written with freshness and humor.", "SOME PEOPLE, by Harold Nicolson (Houghton Mifflin). Thinly disguised chapters of autobiography, by a distinguished writer and member of the British diplomatic service, written with rare charm.", "GUINEA FOWL AND OTHER POULTRY, by Leonard Bacon (Harper). Satirical verse for the most part, full of sardonic humor.", "LAND OF THE PILGRIMS PRIDE, by George Jean Nathan (Knopf). Mr. Nathan reflects upon the morals, conventions, and pleasures of American life.", "THE THREE SITWELLS, by R. L. Mégroz (Doran). An intimate picture of Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell, with an explanation of their work.", "TWENTIETH CENTURY CRIMES, by Frederick A. Mackenzie (Little, Brown). Succinct accounts of eight latterday crimes, including the Leopold-Loeb and Rosenthal cases.", "MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ENGLAND IN 1675, by Madame d'Aulnoy (Dutton). Restoration comedy comes to life in vivid memories of Charles II and his court.", "DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS, by Frances Trollope (Dodd, Mead). A welcome reprint of an entertaining work more sinned against than sinning.", "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, by James Weldon Johnson (Knopf). A pioneering study of negro psychology now first issued over the author's name.", "And Don't Overlook—", "CIRCUS PARADE, by Jim Tully (Albert & Charles Boni). BALZAC, by René Benjamin (Knopf). THE FRANTIC ATLANTIC, by Basil Woon (Knopf). BOUQUET, by G. R. Stern (K. G. K. K. K. K. K. K. K. K

EVE. UNION
SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

SEP 21 1927

Agates and Migs

By ALFRED L. S. WOOD

"AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN"

THE Blue Jade Library published by Alfred A. Knopf becomes increasingly interesting. The latest title to be added is "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man" by James Weldon Johnson, whose recent "God's Trombones," Negro sermons in verse, is the season's most important contribution to Americana. It is the mission of the Blue Jade Library to give another and more beautiful chance to certain splendid books that have inexplicably failed to attract the notice they deserve on first appearance. The chance is beautiful because of all the lovely books issued from the Knopf presses none is dressed and printed as are those of the Blue Jade. For instance, the book under discussion displays covers of flame, black and gold; the type is Caslon Old Face, set on a linotype. Mr. Knopf with unusual publishing intelligence is doing much for the historic type faces by using them on these. Blue Jades and other important books of his lists and printing notes explaining their utility, beauty and historic interest.

"The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man" was first issued in 1912. Sherman French & Co. were the original publishers and, as the introducer, Carl Van Vechten notices, the book was long out of print and practically un procurable. The Autobiography in 1912 was to a greater extent than it is now an unbelievable book. In 1912 Mr. Van Vechten and others who have studied the geography of the place had not discovered Harlem. As a matter of fact, Harlem as it exists today had not come into being. There was nowhere in the country a Negro city and the Negro, his arts and his prob lems, even the problem he presents to the white race, were not taken with the seriousness now given to them. In 1912 most of us were com placently sure that if the Negro "kept his place" there would be no such problem as that of which the South and Northern missionaries to the South were complaining. The Negro then, even more than he is now, was popularly sup posed to be a happy-go-lucky clown, of a cer tain value as an entertainer, but of no great importance in a world obviously made for Caucasians. Sometimes he dignified himself to the estate of an annoyance, but generally he was regarded as a sterile race living within the borders of another and tolerant race that per mitted him to grab certain crumbs. Of Negro intellectuals white men had heard of Booker T. Washington and a very few, indeed, knew that Dr. DuBois was writing bitter books about what he was pleased to think was the oppression of one people by another. Dr. Washington was supposed to believe that a Negro who had been taught to do certain useful and necessary work for his white protectors was a Negro in a fair way of becoming good and, so, most of those who knew of his existence were in sympathy with Dr. Washington; Dr. DuBois, in so far as mattered at all, was considered a trouble maker.

is age and in this country, what the Negroes of the white man and to endeavor to rate the rapidly changing thought of white about the Negro. The first point of view attainable from Mr. Johnson's book: I do not know where one can learn what white men who have abandoned the theory that are clear when they are not worse.

PHILADELPHIA, PA.
RECORD

SEP 24 1927

Tale of an Ex-Colored Man

"THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN," by James Weldon Johnson, with an Introduction by Carl Vechten, Alfred A. Knopf. The Blue Jade Library.

This book, first published anony mously in 1912, when its author was United States Consul to Nicaragua, is an em nently successful volume. Mr. John son's story is a real and moving one, of a "white" Negro, who "passes" over, marries a white woman (and, by the way, lives happily with her), and yet finds in the end that, having evaded his rightful heritage, that he has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. In no sense autobiographical, It may be presumed that the author of "God's Trombones" has neither withheld him self from the problems that face the intelligent American Negro nor passed the color line, the book, as fictionally divorced as the hero's plight is from Mr. Johnson's, is yet so real and penetr ating that one recognizes it as less than fiction and more than truth.

Mr. Van Vechten's main premises, stated in his introduction, are that the "Autobiography" is an invaluable source book for the study of Negro psychology. That it will be a long time before any body can write about the Negro without consulting Mr. Johnson's pages to advantage. Indeed, there is sufficient material here with which to elaborate a dozen novels about the Negro, and all of unusual interest. For Mr. John son, not concerned with writing fiction or autobiography in the conventional sense, has woven onto the pattern and —this is important—taken the reader with him into variegated stories of Negro spirituals, camp-meetings, Jim Crow cars, crap-shooting and the cake- walk. There is even a lynching. Not the least remarkable thing in a remarkable book is the fact that the author's comment on all this is so dispassionate, and tinged with no bitterness whatsoever against the white man.

H. H. H.

NEW YORKER

OCT 1 1927

Ames Mereely
OCT - 1927

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN.
By James Weldon Johnson.
Alfred A. Knopf
New York

8 1/2 x 5 3/4; 211 pp.
$3

This book was first published anonymously in 1912. It is the story of a very light complected colored man who passes for white in numerous circles, especially Northern, and finally marries a white girl of aristocratic family. Its purpose, in the main, is to present a picture of the struggles of the Negro to be admitted into white social and intellectual circles as an equal. The story itself is picturesque, but Mr. Johnson's observations are often a bit platitudinous.

SUN
BALTIMORE, MD.

OCT 1 - 1927

Prospero's Musings

"ME, POOR MAN, MY LIBRARY WAS DUKEDOM LARGE ENOUGH,"

IT is with difficulty that one keeps head-above-water in the autumn flood of new books. Within the limits of this weekly causerie it is impossible to do justice to all the volumes that come to my desk and to my attention; and all that one can do is to report briefly upon some of those which seem most attractive, reserving a few for more detailed comment later. Among those which particularly deserve an attention proportionate to their interest are: J. B. Priestley's new biography of Thomas Love Peacock (Macmillan); Professor Baldwin's important study of "The Organization of the Shakespearean Company" (Princeton University Press)—by no means an entirely academic study but one which has interest for the general reader of intelligence; Railo's instructive and amusing book on "The Haunted Castle" (Dutton); Johnson's "Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man" (the latest addition to the Blue Jade Library—Knopf); and Jean Aubrey's "Joseph Conrad" (Doubleday, Page). To each of these I plan to return, unless they and I are meanwhile completely submerged in the aforesaid flood.

1
2
3

["PHILADELPHIA, PA.", "RECORD", "SEP 24 1927", "## Tale of an Ex-Colored Man", "\"THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN,\" by James Weldon Johnson, with an Introduction by Carl Van Vechten, Alfred A. Knopf. The Blue Jade Library.", "This book, first published anonymously in 1912, when its author was United States Consul to Nicaragua, is an eminently successful volume. Mr. Johnson's story is a real and moving one, of a \"white\" Negro, who \"passes\" over, marries a white woman (and, by the way, lives happily with her), and yet finds in the end that, having evaded his rightful heritage, that he has sold his birthright for a mess of potage. In no sense autobiographical, it may be presumed that the author of \"God's Trombones\" has neither withheld himself from the problems that face the Intelligent American Negro nor passed the color line, the book, as fictionally divorced as the hero's plight is from Mr. Johnson's, is yet so real and penetrating that one recognizes it as less than fiction and more than truth.", "Mr. Van Vechten's main premises, stated in his introduction, are that the \"Autobiography\" is an invaluable source book for the study of Negro psychology. That it will be a long time before anybody can write about the Negro without consulting Mr. Johnson's pages to advantage. Indeed, there is sufficient material here with which to elaborate a dozen novels about the Negro, and all of unusual interest. For Mr. Johnson, not concerned with writing fiction or autobiography in the conventional sense, has woven onto the pattern and —this is important—taken the reader with him into variegated stories of Negro spirituals, camp-meetings, Jim Crow cars, crap-shooting and the cake-walk. There is even a lynching. Not the least remarkable thing in a remarkable book is the fact that the author's comment on all this is so dispassionate, and tinged with no bitterness whatsoever against the white man.", "H. H. H.", "NEW YORKER", "OCT 1 1927", "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, by James Weldon Johnson (Knopf). A pioneering study of negro psychology now first issued over the author's name.", "OCT - 1927", "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN.", "By James Weldon Johnson.", "8 1/2 x 5 3/4; 211 pp.", "Alfred A. Knopf", "New York", "This book was first published anonymously in 1912. It is the story of a very light complected colored man who passes for white in numerous circles, especially Northern, and finally marries a white girl of aristocratic family. Its purpose, in the main, is to present a picture of the struggles of the Negro to be admitted into white social and intellectual circles as an equal. The story itself is picturesque, but Mr. Johnson's observations are often a bit platitudinous.", "SUN", "BALTIMORE, MD.", "OCT 1 - 1927", "## Prospero's Musings", "\"ME, POOR MAN, MY LIBRARY WAS DUKEDOM/LARGE ENOUGH,\"", "IT is with difficulty that one keeps head-above-water in the autumn flood of new books. Within the limits of this weekly causerie it is impossible to do justice to all the volumes that come to my desk and to my attention; and all that one can do is to report briefly upon some of those which seem most attractive, reserving a few for more detailed comment later. Among those which particularly deserve an attention proportionate to their interest are: J. B. Priestley's new biography of Thomas Love Peacock (Macmillan); Professor Baldwin's important study of \"The Organization of the Shakespearean Company\" (Princeton University Press)—by no means an entirely academic study but one which has interest for the general reader of intelligence; Rallo's instructive and amusing book on \"The Haunted Castle\" (Dutton); Johnson's \"Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man\" (the latest addition to the Blue Jade Library—Knopf); and Jean Aubrey's \"Joseph Conrad\" (Doubleday, Page). To each of these I plan to return, unless they and I are meanwhile completely submerged in the aforesaid flood.", "", "The first class of the evening called for saddle ponies not exceeding 14.2 lbs. and not less than 15 authority-stepping miniature saddle horses, which are selected. The class original, or, as designed by Harry Voterester Smith of Lorillard, Grand, and has been a popular one at many of the big horse shows since he showed how it should be done.", "The latter event, always one to be counted upon to keep the interest of the spectators at highest pitch, is a sort for horses to jump over—what the name implies—a broad jump. A number of paper boxes are put on the far side of a low brush jump, presenting a ditch or water jump, and, as the horses successfully negotiate this, additional boxes are cleared still greater. This continues until the unsuccessful ones have been eliminated and the winning ponies are selected. The class original, or, as designed by Harry Voterester Smith of Lorillard, Grand, and has been a popular one at many of the big horse shows since he showed how it should be done.", "", "HARPER", "CENTURY HONORS\nRICHMOND SHO\nWINSLOW\nSHOW\nCABINET\nSHOW\nALMUCH\nSHOW\nCABINET\nSHOW\nAL

58

THE SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, AUGUST 20, 1927

# "A Diversity of Creatures"

## THE END OF A WORLD*

by Claude Anet

The last chapter in the history of a people condemned
to disappear, epitomized in the life of one man.

Illustrated from prehistoric art.

$3.00

## THE SHIP SAILS ON*

by Nordahl Grieg

All the stark realities of a freight steamer's voyage.

$2.50

## A PRINCE OF OUTLAWS*

by Alexis Tolstoy

A romance of the days of Ivan the Terrible, as
tumultuous with action as *With Fire and Sword*, and
utterly free from the Russian excess of introspection.

$3.00

## The AUTOBIOGRAPHY of
AN EX-COLOURED MAN*

by James Weldon Johnson

A source-book which presents every phase of Negro
life in America, and is a sociological document as well
as a fascinating story.

$3.00

## MANCHU BLOOD*

by Hugh Wiley

Tales which combine the lure of San Francisco's
Chinatown and the humor of Jim Sin, one of the oldest
inhabitants.

NATION
NEW YORK, N. Y.

OCT 26 1927

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. By James Weldon Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf. $3.

A welcome reprint of this classic in Negro literature and
life, issued some years ago anonymously.

OCT 8 - 1927

## NEW YORKER

OCT 15 1927

*And Don't Overlook—*

MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ENGLAND IN 1675, by Madame d'Aulnoy (Dutton). DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS, by Frances Trollope (Dodd, Mead). THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, by James Weldon Johnson (Knopf).

NEWARK, N. J.
NEWS

OCT 15 1927

### Negro Life

"The Autobiography of an Ex-coloured Man," by James Weldon Johnson. First published in 1912 and then allowed to go out of print, this story of a colored youth of talent who decided to "pass" as white and did so, presents a vivid portrait of Negro character in many phases. Miscegenation in its slave and marital aspects, the ability of the Negro to mask his feelings with a laugh, Negro adaptability, touchiness and jealousy all are treated. There is even a lynching. Particularly interesting is the fact that even then Mr. Johnson had discovered ragtime as a new and vital contribution to music. For some the appeal of the volume will be its value as a source book of Negro life; for others its story interest, marred to be sure by a certain tract-like quality but having several moving scenes. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

*And Don't Overlook—*

MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ENGLAND IN 1675, by Madame d'Aulnoy (Dutton). DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS, by Frances Trollope (Dodd, Mead). THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, by James Weldon Johnson (Knopf). GUINEA FOWL AND OTHER POULTRY, by Leonard Bacon (Harper). LAND OF THE PILGRIMS' PRIDE, by George Jean Nathan (Knopf). THE THREE SITWELLS, by R. L. Mégroz (Doran). TWENTIETH CENTURY CRIMES, by Frederick A. Mackenzie (Little, Brown).

20

THE WORLD: FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 1927.

FOR EVERY MOOD OF YOURS

The Autobiography of
An Ex-Coloured Man

by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

A book which presents with documental accuracy every phase of American Negro life, and exerts, too, the emotional leverage of curious fiction.

$3.00

The Search for Atlantis

by EDWIN BJÖRKMAN

An island always in the imaginations of men is re-created on a basis of erudition; and the romance of the myth is thereby not impaired, but enhanced.

$2.00

Manchu Blood

by HUGH WILEY

Stories of the people of San Francisco's Chinatown. Even in their tragedies there lurks the gleam of humor.

$2.50

The Ship Sails On

BY NORDAHL GRIEG

Stark realities of a freight steamer's voyage...................$2.50

A Prince of Outlaws

BY ALEXIS TOLSTOY

A romance of outlawry in the days of Ivan the Terrible....$3.00

People Round the Corner

BY THYRA SAMTER WINSLOW

Fourth large printing...................................$2.50

Mattock

BY JAMES STEVENS

Second large printing...................................$2.50

The Green Rope

BY J. S. FLETCHER

$2.00

The Magic Mountain

BY THOMAS MANN

Second large printing. 2 vols. boxed...................$6.00

AT ALL BOOKSHOPS

Alfred A. Knopf

Publisher

In Canada, from
The Macmillan Company
of Canada, Ltd.,

BORZOL
BOOKS

New York

St. Martin's House,
Bond St.
Toronto, Ontario.

NEW YORK CITY AMERICAN
OCTOBER 24, 1927

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th></th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Pat.</td><td>Laurier, contralto.</td><td>10:00—Deauville Ladies' Trio.</td></tr><tr><td>11.</td><td>Pat.</td><td>10:30—Police alarms.</td></tr><tr><td>Team</td><td>Team</td><td>10:35—"Facts About Our Govern-ment."</td></tr><tr><td>Rock:</td><td>492—WEAF.</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>B. C.</td><td></td><td>6:45 A. M.—Health exercises.</td></tr><tr><td>B. S.</td><td></td><td>8:00—Roaring Lyons.</td></tr><tr><td>SS. A.</td><td></td><td>8:15—Federation's devotions.</td></tr><tr><td>E. R.</td><td></td><td>8:30—Cheerio.</td></tr><tr><td>pion-<br>er-<br>ed<br>les).</td><td></td><td>11:00—Ruby Heider, tenor.</td></tr><tr><td>onal</td><td></td><td>11:15—Health talk.</td></tr><tr><td>s. C.</td><td></td><td>11:30—Ruby Heider, tenor.</td></tr><tr><td>ition</td><td></td><td>11:45—"Garden Talk," Leonard Bar-<br>ron.</td></tr><tr><td>or, of<br>orris</td><td></td><td>12:15 P. M.—Palais d'Or Orchestra.</td></tr><tr><td>and<br>id 3.</td><td></td><td>4:00—"Brighter Than the Rainbows,"<br>Martin Meyer.</td></tr><tr><td>W.</td><td></td><td>4:15—Di Stefano's Trio.</td></tr><tr><td>W.</td><td></td><td>4:45—"Express Yourself," Dagmar<br>Perkins.</td></tr><tr><td>time-<br>in-<br>'t's<br>vn.</td><td></td><td>5:00—Forest Hills orchestra.</td></tr><tr><td>say.</td><td></td><td>6:00—Waldorf-Astoria orchestra.</td></tr><tr><td>2.</td><td></td><td>7:00—Mac and Lennie.</td></tr><tr><td>C.</td><td></td><td>7:10—"What Americans Think of the<br>English," Ronald Pertwee.</td></tr><tr><td>—12</td><td></td><td>7:30—Chamber music series.</td></tr><tr><td>sen.</td><td></td><td>8:00—"The Autobiography of an ex-Colored Man," by James Weldon Johnson.</td></tr><tr><td>5.</td><td></td><td>8:10—Air frelies.</td></tr><tr><td>B:</td><td></td><td>8:30—A. & P. Gypsies.</td></tr><tr><td>sen.</td><td></td><td>9:30—Opera, "Lakme."</td></tr><tr><td>ow.</td><td></td><td>10:30—South Sea Islanders.</td></tr><tr><td>—7.</td><td></td><td>11:00—Palais d'Or Orchestra.</td></tr><tr><td>our-<br>ius<br>nat-<br>gat.</td><td></td><td>454—WJZ.</td></tr><tr><td>Ed.</td><td></td><td>1:00 P. M.—Astor Trio.</td></tr><tr><td>S.</td><td></td><td>2:05—Daily menu.</td></tr><tr><td>—1.</td><td></td><td>—Housekeeping talk.</td></tr><tr><td>red</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>lay</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>er.</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>—E.</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>—C.</td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
By James Weldon Johnson. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf. $3.00.

FIRST published anonymously in 1912, this classic of negro literature is now reissued under the author's name and with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten. Here for the first time the intimate psychology of an American negro in all his relations with the white race is put down with sympathy and great literary skill by a negro. Jim Crow cars, crap shooting, the cakewalk, color snobbery within the race, a Southern camp meeting, and a lynching are described and interpreted with a blending of intimate knowledge and objectivity rare in negro writing, rare in any literature that treats the bitter theme of race relations. James Weldon Johnson, apart from his writing, is known to the world as a collector and interpreter of negro folk music.

NEW YORK CITY AMERICAN
OCTOBER 23, 1927

WEAF's Monday schedule underwent various changes. For the time the weekly debate between Drs. Hall-Quest and Hibschman was dispensed with, to give way to a thoroughly unimportant, but, possibly commercial, talk. A new feature, "Meet New Yorkers," developed in the form of an interview with James Weldon Johnson, in which Mr. Johnson discussed his own literary achievements, the American String Quartette provided a delightful period of chamber music, featuring the Haydn Quartette D' minor, and the Gypsies introduced a soloist, who proved to be Jessica Dragonette, lyric soprano, who added no little to the appeal of the programme. The high spot, however, was another performance of "Lakme," with Genia Zielinska in the title role.

WOR's Columbia junket materialized as one of the spotlight events, being another of the great composer hours and most appropriately dedicating itself to an observance of the twentieth anniversary of the death of Edward McDowell. In the course of events, a message from the composer's widow was forthcoming. Two movements from the lovely "Indian Suite," and such favorites from MacDowell's works, as "To a Wild Rose," "To a Water Lily," and "Midsummer Lullaby," were accomplished by the symphony orchestra and Alexander Semmler, pianist.

6:

6:

6:

6:

7:

7:

7:

8:

8:

8:

9:

9:

9:

9:

9:

9:

9:

9:

10:

11:

11:

11:

11:

11:

11:

11:

THIS CLIPPING FROM
NEW YORKER

OCT 29 1927

And Don't Overlook—

MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ENGLAND IN 1675, by Madame d'Aulnoy (Dutton). DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS, by Frances Trollope (Dodd, Meade). THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, by James Weldon Johnson (Knopf). GUINEA FOWL AND OTHER POULTRY, by Leonard Bacon (Harper). LAND OF THE PILGRIMS' PRIDE, by George Jean Nathan (Knopf). THE THREE SITWELLS, by R. L. Mégroz (Doran). TWENTIETH CENTURY CRIMES, by Frederick A. Mackenzie (Little, Brown). SOME PEOPLE, by Harold Nicolson (Houghton Mifflin).

HERALD
Boston, Mass.

OCT 29 1927

EX-COLORED

A Story Which Is a Treatise on Race Relations

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. by James Weldon Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf.

Mr. Johnson's book was first published in Boston in 1912 without the author's name. It has long been out of print, and as a piece of literature and as one of the most important source books on the life of the negro in America it desreves the recognition that Mr. Knopf gives it by inclusion in his Blue Jade Library. Carl Van Vechten writes an introduction to this edition.

When Mr. Johnson wrote it he was United States consul to Nicaragua. It is not to be taken as autobiographical, for Mr. Johnson himself, an able lawyer, a faithful public servant, and a musician of unusual attainments, has identified himself throughout his career with the negro race. There is, however, no little of his own experiences as well as his own observations in the narrative of the young colored man whom he makes his hero. That young man "goes white," as has many another colored man and colored woman in whose veins there was so much more of white blood than of negro blood that the transition, especially when moving to a new neighborhood, was not at all difficult. That transition has figured in several novels of late, and both in fiction and non-fiction there has recently been much discussion of the problems and the racial relations with which Mr. Johnson dealt in this book 15 years ago. Many of his astonishing predictions have become realities.

His book is written in the best of temper and in a keenly analytical spirit. No one who has even the remotest interest in what we call the negro problem should fail to read it.

N. Y. C. NEW YORKER
OCTOBER 22, 1927

rare charm.

And Don't Overlook—

MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ENGLAND IN 1675, by Madame d'Aulnoy (Dutton). DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS, by Frances Trollope (Dodd, Meade). THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, by James Weldon Johnson (Knopf). GUINEA FOWL AND OTHER POULTRY, by Leonard Bacon (Harper). LAND OF THE PILGRIMS' PRIDE, by George Jean Nathan (Knopf). THE THREE SITWELLS, by R. L. Mégroz (Doran). TWENTIETH CENTURY CRIMES, by Frederick A. Mackenzie (Li le, Brown).

JOURNAL
SIOUX CITY, IOWA

OCT 30 1927

Interesting Offering
Over the Radio

If you will tune in at 7 o'clock (our time) tomorrow evening on WOW, Omaha, you will hear an interview with Elmer Davis from New York over the red network. Last Monday we were delighted to stumble upon a 15-minute talk at this station with James Weldon Johnson, whose "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man," a classic in negro literature, has recently been reprinted.

International Press-Cutting Bureau

329, High Holborn, London, W.C.1.

Extract from
JOHN O' LONDON'S WEEKLY, London.

Date... -1 OGI 1927

IT is now revealed that "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man," published by Knopf is by James Weldon Johnson, who has done so much to popularize the Negro Spiritual. The title of the book is explained by the fact that Mr. Johnson, though a Negro born, has a complexion so fair that he passes as a white man.

NEW YORK AMERICAN

S NOVEMBER 1927

THE house of Alfred A. Knopf offers James Weldon Johnson's THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY of an EX-COLOURED MAN, in timely season. In a day when 300,000 negroes overnight displaced in a limited area of the City of New York 200,000 whites, one is prone to cause and make inquiry as to when and how this was done. Certainly, few were cognizant of the sweeping change, effected without offensive aggression on the one side and protest or reprisal on the other. The author could not treat of this phenomena in this work, first published in 1912, because the northward march of his people in great numbers is rather recent. But in his poignant story of the white boy in whom there flowed a strain of negro blood, Johnson foretells the change was to be, the change that has since made long strides. Although its title implies that this work is an autobiography, it is plainly not a story of the life of the author. Rather does this pulsating, throbbing document reveal the outlook of a people through the medium of one man, a fictional character. Through him is revealed an awakening of a people long oppressed, an almost passive revulsion against this oppression which, inevitably, started the race northward.

It is needless to quote from the early history, so well told by the author. The book has been discussed for more than a decade. Only because of the recent interest in the negro and because it was a work that one sought vainly did the present publishers cause its reissue. It is in the later portions of his story that Mr. Johnson paints graphically the scenes that compelled the current exodus, a movement that is rapidly changing the character of New York, Chicago and other large Northern cities. Political and economic phases of the question aside, there is more than a hint in his scene: of the negro, the attitude of the negro, hitherto denied an attitude, toward the white man. A remarkable document is this new addition to the Knopf Blue Jade Library, an addition which many will receive with keen interest.

BALTIMORE AND NEW YORK
OCTOBER 15, 1927

Prospero's Musings

"ME, POOR MAN, MY LIBRARY WAS DUKEDOM LARGE ENOUGH."

WHEN, in 1912, "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" was published anonymously it made apparently so little stir that, so far as I have been able to discover, it was not reviewed in the pages of that doughty champion of the colored people, the New York Nation. For myself, I must confess that I had never heard of the book until the keen eye of Mr. Alfred A. Knopf marked it out for inclusion in the Blue Jade Library, that repository of curious books which for one reason or another have not won their due share of recognition. The author's name is now revealed: Mr. James Weldon Johnson. The book, as Mr. Van Večen ten remarks in his introduction, is to be read as fiction, for the actual course of the narrative does not follow the author's life at all closely; but it is of the sort of fiction that is truer than truth.

NOT for long have I read a book which interested and moved me so much. From the moment when, as a little boy at school, the narrator accidentally learned that he was "colored" (though of a shade so light that hitherto he had passed as white) the forceful and pitiable story grips one's attention. The writer's life as a tobacco roller in Florida, as a gambler in New York (in the pre-Harlem days when the Negroes congregated on the West Side below Fifty-ninth street), as a piano player in a well-to-do Negro resort, as the companion of an enlightened and liberal-minded though cynical and selfish millionaire in Europe, and finally as "an ex-colored man" when he repudiated the handicaps imposed on him by loyalty to his race—all is simply and vividly told. Of especial interest is Mr. Johnson's discussion of Negro musics—ragtime and the spirituals. The worth of jazz and jubilee-singing he appreciated at a time when their claim to attention was generally ignored.

JOURNAL
SIOUX CITY, IOWA

OCT 30 1927

Date....... 1 OCT 1927

IT is now revealed that "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man," published by Knopf, is by James Weldon Johnson, who has done so much to popularize the Negro Spirituals. The title of the book is explained by the fact that Mr. Johnson, though a Negro born, has a complexion so fair that he passes as a white man.

"It was over before I realized that time had elapsed. Before I could make myself believe that what I saw was really happening was looking at a scorched post, smoldering fire, blackened ones, charred fragments sifting through coils of chains; and the smell of burnt flesh—human flesh—was in my nostrils."

Despite this harrowing picture, the author can still recall that, man to man, the Southern white, with a degree of justice, claims that he loves the negro more than does the Northern white. He points out why and where this is so.

Many and varied are the phases of negro life and its relation to the dominant white touched upon by this writer. Their places socially, at work, at play, in the schools and in politics are treated soberly and with keen discernment. One is struck with the vision of the author as regards developments here. For example: As far back as 1912 he foresaw that instead of a deluge of ragtime based on or—as is more often the case, stolen from—the classics, there might well be classics based on old negro folk songs. Here Mr. Johnson anticipated George Gershwin and his Rhapsody in Blues by almost fifteen years. The work throughout is prophetic no less than an absorbing life's record. It is valuable, above all, for the candor with which is given the viewpoint of the negro, the attitude of the negro, hitherto denied an attitude, toward the white man. A remarkable document is this new addition to the Knopf Blue Jade Library, an addition which many will receive with keen interest.

BALTIMORE AND MARYLAND
OCTOBER 15, 1927

NEW

Prospero's Musings

WHEN, in 1912, "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" was published anonymously it made apparently so little stir that, so far as I have been able to discover, it was not reviewed in the pages of that doughty champion of the colored people, the New York Nation. For myself, I must confess that I had never heard of the book until the keen eye of Mr. Alfred A. Knopf marked it out for inclusion in the Blue Jade Library, that repository of curious books which for one reason or another have not won their due share of recognition. The author's name is now revealed: Mr. James Weldon Johnson. The book, as Mr. Van Večten remarks in his introduction, is to be read as fiction, for the actual course of the narrative does not follow the author's life at all closely; but it is of the sort of fiction that is truer than truth.

LITTLE EXCURSIONS
WEEK BY WEEK

By Alice Dunbar Nelson.

(For the A. N. P.)

Cheyney is a lovely place. It is nestled among the hills of southern Pennsylvania; a country of rolling land, dashing rocky streams, low-wooded hills, fertile fields, peaceful farms. The Cheyney Normal School lies in the heart of all this beauty, and thither on "Cheyney Day" every October come its friends and well-wishers to celebrate a community fair and school conference.

There are always good speakers, an artist to sing in the evening, or to play; demonstrations and group conferences; exhibits of work done in all the various communities in the county for miles around; prizes awarded for handiwork, and farm products; reports of working committees, a baby show, with prizes for healthy babies; luncheon and supper served by the pupils in Home Economics to the hundreds of visitors; a football game. In fact, a general good time day for everyone. And people pour in from Philadelphia,

from Chester, from Delaware, from Maryland, from Coatesville, from West Chester, from Media, from all the little towns and hamlets and farms for miles around. Principal Leslie P. Hill and his faculty and pupils are everywhere welcoming, making happy the visit. The exhibits are thronged all day, to the chapel is packed at the meetings and the concert. And when late at night the last of the busses and cars and fliers has honked its way down the winding road to the main highway, and waved its farewell to the group of grey stone buildings on the hillside, it is with a feeling of deep satisfaction that the school turns out its lights and goes to sleep tired and happy at having given its friends a demonstration of work well done, and hospitality beautifully dispensed. And the Community League which has been cooperating with the school retires to West Chester to check the books for another year.

Last Saturday Dr. James H. Dillard of the Jeanes and Slater Funds spoke in the morning. James Weldon Johnson thrilled the afternoon session. For he not only made a speech, but he read one of the sermons from his "God's Trombones"—"Go Down Death," and there was not a dry eye in the room when he had finished. But in the evening! Mme. Lillian Evanti gave a program. She was lovely, and more than lovely; she sang with an ease and grace and finish and art that brought her audience cheering to its feet. Songs in Italian, in French, in English, Negro spirituals, of course, a popular song for an encore. And a scene in costume from "La Traviata." So well done that you have no doubt of her artistry as an opera singer. That one last selection was worth the whole day's journey and the wait until the evening.

It was the end of a perfect day and as the family fliver snorts its way through the winding woodland road late that night, one phrase of James Weldon Johnson's speech hammers into our minds, beating time with the chug-chug of the engine—"Saving black men's bodies and white men's souls."

NOVEMBER 19, 1927

The Tragedy of Colour.

Mr. James Weldon Johnson, the a
biography of an Ex-Coloured Man,"
at 10s. 6d. by Mr. A. Knopf, 38, I
is secretary of the National Associa-
ment of Coloured People, an organ
States which is exerting a powerf
those whose knowledge of Negro
limited. Mr. Johnson was Unite
Venezuela in 1906 and to Nicaragua

brother, Mr. J. Rosamond Johnson, is a well-known
musician, composer, singer and arranger of Negro
"spirituals." The book is a novel, in the form of an
autobiography, about a child (born of a light-coloured
Negress and a White man), who grows up to manhood
and is forced by prejudice to "pass" into the White
race. There are passages devoted to the celebration of
Negro spirituals, a Southern camp meeting, and even a
lynching.

THIS CLIPPING FROM
PITTSBURGH, PA.
POST
Correspondent

NOV 26 1927

"Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man" and "God's Trombones," by James W. Johnson, Intellectual Chicago is whetting its appetite for the literary feast which will be spread for them during Negro in Art Week. James W. Johnson, artist and scholar, will be an attraction. In the meantime, the writer has been devouring with a great relish his two most pop-

over)

All this Mr. Johnson has made live in his pages. Somehow you move with him through all his vicissitudes—in the little Connecticut town, among the Spanish speaking cigar-makers, in the beautiful town of Jacksonville (here certainly Mr. Johnson was at home), in the noisome dens of the gambling clubs of New York; in France, in England, and back at home in his own country. He makes you feel his griefs from the very suppression of his own emotions. And here is where the sheer art of the book is evident. The author expresses both objectively and subjectively emotions both complex and powerful. He is shaken to the soul by grief, tormented by indecisions, perplexed by grave problems, and you feel it all with him. albeit you are, at the same time, standing with him on the

real champagne, and not by bootleg substitutes.

Fifteen years ago, when the book appeared, there was no Harlem, as we know it now. Negro night life had moved from the Thirties, which are described in the Autobiography, to the Fifties. The early scenes of the book lie in the Thirties, twenty-five years ago, in the hey-day of George Walker and Cole and Johnson and hansom cabs and the Floradors sextette and all the rest of the hectic days of the early twentieth century. The child of mysterious parentage, such as the author describes himself in the earlier chapters, was common enough in the South of thirty or forty years ago, but fortunately no more. And for that the race may have a sigh of relief and thankfulness. Jazz was unknown, but Lottie Collins had glorified rag-time, and the big Negro shows of the time were making it classic. Cabarets were "Clubs" and vice was gilded, not painted. Life was a bubble and froth in the cup of pleasure, but its bubbles were perhaps caused by

late edition. He acknowledges his indebtedness to the
book in making his studies of the Negro, and compares
it to Booker Washington's *Up From Slavery* which it
rather resembles in manner and diction. Its dispassionate,
impersonal air, with complete lack of verbiage, fine writ-
ing, mysteries, passion, adjectives or rhetorical invocations
does suggest Mr. Washington's style. But as suggested by
Mr. Van Vechten, the limitations of *Up From Slavery* are
not to be found in the Autobiography.

Fifty-third St., which had in it one iron bedstead and one piano. There came George Lederer, Lillian Russell, May Irwin and Oscar Hammerstein at various times to hear the opera. The opera itself was not sold, but it was the cause of connections of the

brothers with Klaw & Erlanger which
lasted for a number of years. James
Weldon Johnson was U. S. consul to
Venezuela in 1906 and from 1909 to
1912 served as consul at Corinto,
Nicaragua. He won the Spingarn
medal in 1925.

In 1927, the story is that of a light-skinned African American who, after various bitter experiences, decides to "pass," or go white, and does so. It is interesting and authentic and naturally somewhat race-conscious.
H. T. M.

NOVEMBER, 1927

OPPORTUNITY

OUR BOOK SHELF

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, by James Wel-
don Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. $3.00.
With an Introduction by Carl Van Vechten

IT was in 1912 that the reading public among Negroes and friends of Negroes was shaken to its inner core by the appearance of a book, surely the strangest that had ever been written by or about the Negro. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, published anonymously, evoked wide and varied speculation. Was the author really a Negro? Was it not perhaps some white man, who having observed the phenomenon of the fair colored man, slipped over into the ranks of the Caucasians, was perhaps venting his delicate satire on the American public? Negroes generally believed that the author was "one of ours". There were too many little subtle ear-marks of the man born, bred and nutured in the traditions of the race. No mere white man could hope to penetrate into the mysteries of racial psychology. But the wonder died down, as wonders have a fashion of doing, and the book was out of print before the secret of its authorship leaked out and became generally known.

But the memory of the remarkable work clung, and therefore it is felt that Alfred A. Knopf has performed a distinct service to present day literature by bringing out another edition of this delicate satire. For satire it is, couched in the most subtle form. The same sort of satire that Swift perpetrated in *Gulliver's Travels*, bland, lucid, arresting by its very naivete. Or perhaps the kind of disarming narrative that Defoe writes in his apparent autobiographies, the supreme art of putting oneself into the soul of another, albeit that other has probably only existed in one's imagination.

Carl Van Vechten has written an introduction to this late edition. He acknowledges his indebtedness to the book in making his studies of the Negro, and compares it to Booker Washington's *Up From Slavery* which it rather resembles in manner and diction. Its dispassionate, impersonal air, with complete lack of verbiage, fine writing, hysterics, passion, adjectives or rhetorical involutions does suggest Mr. Washington's style. But as suggested by Mr. Van Vechten, the limitations of *Up From Slavery* are not to be found in the Autobiography.

Fifteen years ago, when the book appeared, there was no Harlem, as we know it now. Negro night life had moved from the Thirties, which are described in the Autobiography, to the Fifties. The early scenes of the book lie in the Thirties, twenty-five years ago, in the hey-dey of George Walker and Cole and Johnson and hansom ccabs and the Floradora sextette and all the rest of the hectic days of the early twentieth century. The child of mysterious parentage, such as the author describes himself in the earlier chapters, was common enough in the South of thirty or forty years ago, but fortunately no more. And for that the race may heave a sigh of relief and thankfulness. Jazz was unknown, but Lottie Collins had glorified rag-time, and the big Negro shows of the time were making it classic. Cabarets were "Clubs" and vice was gilded, not painted. Life was a bubble and froth in the cup of pleasure, but its bubbles were perhaps caused by real champagne, and not by bootleg substitutes.

All this Mr. Johnson has made live in his pages. Some-
how you move with him through all his vicissitudes—in
the little Connecticut town, among the Spanish speaking
cigar-makers, in the beautiful town of Jacksonville (here
certainly Mr. Johnson was at home), in the noisome dens
of the gambling clubs of New York; in France, in England,
and back at home in his own country. He makes you
feel his griefs from the very suppression of his own emo-
tions. And here is where the sheer art of the book, is
evident. The author expresses both objectively and sub-
jectively emotions both complex and powerful. He is
shaken to the soul by grief, tormented by indecisions, per-
plexed by grave problems, and you feel it all with him,
albeit you are, at the same time, standing with him on the

AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF AN
EX-COLOURED MAN
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

From the Jacket of "The Autobiography of An Ex-Coloured Man"

outside of the emotional area watching the writhings of
the nameless individual who acts as protagonist.

Another great claim upon the imagination of the present
day reader lies in the musical hints which Mr. Johnson
gives of what he was later to elaborate. The "Ex-Coloured
Man" was primarily a musician, and it was as a musician
that he had hoped to create his career. Hence his in-
terest in the folk-songs of the Negro, and his dismay when
he found he must throw over his chosen career if he were
to be white. Had he lived now, it would have only served
as a whet to his ambition, whether white or black, to write
of the music of the Negro. In the book we find precursors
of the scholarly and exhaustive introductions to the two
books of Negro Spirituals, edited by Mr. Johnson, and to
God's Trombones. There are glimpses of the classic "Sing-
ing Johnson" and "John Brown, the Preacher", now well-
known to Mr. Johnson's readers. "The day will come."
he avers, "when this slave music will be the most treas-
ured heritage of the American Negro." A bold prophecy.
but that day has come, and more than that, for this
slave music is the biggest thing in the modern musical
world.

The book runs the whole gamut of the life of an American Negro not only twenty-five or thirty years ago, but of today, from the debauched slave woman with her octoroon offspring, to the very latest style in lynchings—which the author describes with so few lines that it seems almost like a dry-point etching, nauseatingly vivid and terse. It describes every variety of American Negro from the crudest field hand to the cultured professional man and their wives in the inner circles of fashionable Washington. In a small space he has epitomized the life and soul of the Negro, as surprisingly true then as now. There have been additions to the charmed circle of the culturally elect, yet the soul of the race is essentially the same. And the lynchings go on as merrily and as vividly, yea, even more so, as ever, so that the thoughtful Negro may still

at his heart until he shall close his eyes upon a deceitful
world.

Alice Dunbar Nelson.

["NOVEMBER, 1927", "OPPORTUNITY", "OUR BOOK SHELF", "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, by James Wel-\ndon Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. $3.00.\nWith an Introduction by Carl Van Vechten", "It was in 1912 that the reading public among Negroes and friends of Negroes was shaken to its inner core by the appearance of a book, surely the strangest that had ever been written by or about the Negro. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, published anonymously, evoked wide and varied speculation. Was the author really a Negro? Was it not perhaps some white man, who having observed the phenomenon of the fair colored man, slipped over into the ranks of the Caucasians, was perhaps venting his delicate satire on the American public? Negroes generally believed that the author was \"one of ours\". There were too many little subtle ear-marks of the man born, bred and nurtured in the traditions of the race. No mere white man could hope to penetrate into the mysteries of racial psychology. But the wonder died down, as wonders have a fashion of doing, and the book was out of print before the secret of its authorship leaked out and became generally known.", "But the memory of the remarkable work clung, and therefore it is felt that Alfred A. Knopf has performed a distinct service to present day literature by bringing out another edition of this delicate satire. For satire it is, couched in the most subtle form. The same sort of satire that Swift perpetrated in Gulliver's Travels, bland, lucid, arresting by its very naiveté. Or perhaps the kind of disarming narrative that Defoe writes in his apparent autobiographies, the supreme art of putting oneself into the soul of another, albeit that other has probably only existed in one's imagination.", "Carl Van Vechten has written an introduction to this late edition. He acknowledges his indebtedness to the book in making his studies of the Negro, and compares it to Booker Washington's *Up From Slavery* which it rather resembles in manner and diction. Its dispassionate, impersonal air, with complete lack of verbiage, fine writing, hysterics, passion, adjectives or rhetorical involutions does suggest Mr. Washington's style. But as suggested by Mr. Van Vechten, the limitations of *Up From Slavery* are not to be found in the Autobiography.", "Fifteen years ago, when the book appeared, there was no Harlem, as we know it now. Negro night life had moved from the Thirties, which are described in the Autobiography, to the Fifties. The early scenes of the book lie in the Thirties, twenty-five years ago, in the hey-dey of George Walker and Cole and Johnson and hansom ccabs and the Floradora sextette and all the rest of the hectic days of the early twentieth century. The child of mysterious parentage, such as the author describes himself in the earlier chapters, was common enough in the South of thirty or forty years ago, but fortunately no more. And for that the race may heave a sigh of relief and thankfulness. Jazz was unknown, but Lottie Collins had glorified rag-time, and the big Negro shows of the time were making it classic. Cabarets were \"Clubs\" and vice was gilded, not painted. Life was a bubble and froth in the cup of pleasure, but its bubbles were perhaps caused by real champagne, and not by bootleg substitutes.", "All this Mr. Johnson has made live in his pages. Some-\nhow you move with him through all his vicissitudes—in\nthe little Connecticut town, among the Spanish speaking\ncigar-makers, in the beautiful town of Jacksonville (here\ncertainly Mr. Johnson was at home), in the noisome dens\nof the gambling clubs of New York; in France, in England,\nand back at home in his own country. He makes you\nfeel his griefs from the very suppression of his own emo-\ntions. And here is where the sheer art of the boo', is\nevident. The author expresses both objectively and sub-\njectively emotions both complex and powerful. He is\nshaken to the soul by grief, tormented by indecisions, per-\nplexed by grave problems, and you feel it all with him,\nalbeit you are, at the same time, standing with him on the", "AUTOBIOGRAPHY\nOF AN\nEX-COLOURED MAN\nJAMES WELDON JOHNSON", "the present\nout of\nthe\nper-\nald\nalbeit\nyou\nare,\n\nThe author expresses both objective and sub-\njectively emotions both complex and pow-\nshaken to the soul by grief, tormented by\npierced by grave problems, and you\nare, at the same time,\n\nfeel his griefs from the very suppression of his own emo-\ntions. And here is where the sheer art of the book is\nevident.\n\nthe\nsub-\nject\n\nthe\n\nthe\n\nthe\n\nthe\n\nthe\n\nthe

54

THE HOME MISSION COLLEGE REVIEW

Jan. 1928

33

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN. By James Weldon Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1927.

This book was originally published anonymously in 1912 by Sherman, French & Co., of Boston, a firm that has now retired from business, and for some years it has been out of print. It has now been reissued, being included in Knopf's Blue Jade Library, and this time it is duly credited to the author. Mr. Van Vechten's Introduction is unusually felicitous, for it is well to have the history of the publication, and it would be a mistake for any reader to suppose that the events recorded are a literal transcription of Mr. Johnson's life.

As a matter of fact, the method of the book is primarily that of fiction; at the same time the author draws upon his own experience as freely as he chooses. So doing he is able to interpret without any restriction the life of which he has been a part. It is accordingly as an interpretation that the book has its chief merit; at the same time, in the incidents it records, it covers such a vast amount of territory that it might almost serve as a source book on the life of the Negro people in the United States in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The young hero, born in Georgia, attends school in Connecticut, and later looks large-eyed upon the world of which he sees a good deal; and when he is a little wicked he is quite conscious of his naughtiness. The book touches upon practically every phase of Negro life in the South, takes us abroad, and, while it is to-day as fresh as when it was first written, it shows that it anticipated the hectic and erotic temper that we have had in Negro literature and music since the war. Again and again there is a summing up of a situation familiar enough to the initiated, yet not always well known to the public at large. At the very close the central figure, after many misgivings, has decided to remain beyond the color-line. He is not satisfied, however. He attends in Carnegie Hall a meeting at which he hears the Hampton students sing.

Among the speakers were C. Ogden, ex-Ambassador Choate, and Mark Twain; but the greatest interest of the audience was centred in Booker T. Washington, and not because he so much surpassed the others in eloquence, but because of what he represented with so much earnestness and faith. And it is this that all of that small but gallant band of coloured men who are publicly fighting the cause of their race have behind them. Even those who oppose them know that these men have the eternal principles of right on their side, and they will be victors even though they should go down in defeat. Beside them I feel small and seinsth. I am an ordinarily successful white man who has made a little money. They are men who are making history and a race. I, too, might have taken part in a work so glorious.

It is well that this book is once more accessible, and the present edition is in the highest degree well printed and readable. Anyone interested in social problems in America to-day will want to have the work on his shelves.

John W. Buel

EX-COLORED

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson; Alfred A. Knopf Mr. Johnson's book was first published in Boston in 1912 without the author's name. It has long been out of print, and as a piece of literature and as one of the most important source books on the life of the negro in America it deserves the recognition that Mr. Knopf gives it by inclusion in his Blue Jade Library. Carl Van Vechten writes an introduction to this edition. When Mr. Johnson wrote it he was United States consul to Nicaragua. It is not to be taken as autobiographical, for Mr. Johnson himself, an able lawyer, a faithful public servant, and a musi- cian of unusual attainments, has identi- fied himself throughout his career with the negro race. There is, however, no little of his own experiences as well as his own observations in the narrative of the young, colorèd man whom he makes his hero. That young man "goes white," as has many another colored man and colored woman in whose veins there was so much more of white blood than of negro blood that the transition, especially when moving to a new neigh- borhood, was not at all difficult. That transition has figured in several novels of late, and both in fiction and non- fiction there has recently been much discussion of the problems and the racial relations with which Mr. John- son dealt in this book 15 years ago. Many of his astonishing predictions have become realities.

His book is written in the best of temper and in a keenly analytical spirit. No one who has even the remotest in- terest in what we call the negro prob- lem should fail to read it.

The Atlantic Monthly, New York, U. S. A.

THE OBSERVER, SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 1928.

THE TRAGEDY OF A
WHITE NEGRO.

"The Autobiography of an ex-Coloured Man." By J. W. Johnson, (Knopf. 10s. 6d.)

This is a reissue of a book which was one of the first to call attention to the fact that men who are technically "coloured" can and do "go white." It is in form a novel; and Mr. Van Vechten warns the reader in his preface against the danger of assuming that it is at all autobiographical. Mr. Johnson is a negro poet of distinction, and with his brother, Mr. Rosamond Johnson, has done much to call attention to the beauty and originality of those lovely "spirituals," first heard in Europe when the Fisk Jubilee singers came over, and more recently through the marvellous interpretations of Mr. Roland Hayes. This story of a white negro, printed originally fifteen years ago, is still, we imagine, a true picture of the problems that confront such a man. It is so easy for such a man to "go white," and such a temptation. By doing so he avoids the prejudice and the difficulties that confront a coloured man of culture in so many parts of America. Mr. Johnson represents his hero as first endeavouring to share the life of those who are unable to pass as whites. He finds the life one of continuous hardship and frequent humiliation. The main difficulty is put poignantly by one of the characters, an educated negro who comes back, after his education, to his hometown of Jacksonville, Georgia:—

We passed a young white man, and my companion said to me: "You see that young man? We grew up together; we have played, hunted, and fished together; we have even eaten and slept together; and now since I have come back home, he barely speaks to me." . . . As the progressive coloured people advance, they constantly widen the gulf between themselves and their white neighbours.

that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage." He is married happily to a white woman who knows his story: when she dies he is left with two children. Is he to tell them or not? Is his action any help towards redeeming the race to which in part he belongs? It is plain enough that no one man can settle the question or answer the riddle. A coloured man does, by the mere fact of acquiring culture, in a sense desert that in his people which many would call their distinguishing quality—but such desertion is a moral obligation. No man has a right to refuse to improve himself because his motive may be misunderstood; and all the coloured people of culture can do is to go on insisting, in season and out of season, that colour must not be a bar; that the only real barriers between man and man are those of intelligence, breeding, and education, and that those bars must yield in time to the solvent of mental and moral advance. The very fact that there are so many coloured men who can pass for white proves that the colour bar is down; and to attempt to restore it is to fight, with the certainty of ultimate and ignominious defeat, on behalf of a cause which has nothing to recommend it but a sentimental obscurantism.

THIS CLIPPING FROM
CHICAGO, ILL.

POST

JAN 27 1928

Darrow on Weldon Johnson.

"The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man," by James Weldon Johnson (Knopf) is an exquisite work. It is simple and plain and human and delightfully easy to read. It would melt the heart of a stone or a white man—if only stones or white people had hearts.

"Mr. Johnson has already shown that he is one of America's best poets. This book shows that he has few equals as a writer of prose."—Clarissa Darrow.

KADELPIAN Review
NOV - 1927

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ON EX-COLORED MAN by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON. Alfred A. Knopf. 211 pp.

A vivid, startling view of a black man "passing" into the pale class that is called white. It is, as Mr. VanVechten says in his Introduction, "a composite auto-

biography of the colored race." Although written in 1912, when social conditions were somewhat different and Harlem had not become the largest negro capitol in the same now. The caste system within the world, the negro's point of view then is today and exacts its merciless codes. In New York are many colored people who easily are accepted as white, a social deception that has resulted in far-reaching tragedies. Mr. Johnson paints a series of the negro, North and South, that deserves a high place in any list of studies of this still unsolved American problem. Nowhere will one find so true an analysis of negro psychology, nowhere a franker self-criticism by a member of his race.

The style is impelling as shown in the following:

The most striking example of John Brown's magnetism and imagination was his "heavenly march"; I shall never forget how it impressed me when I heard it. He opened his sermon in the usual way: then, proclaiming to his listeners that he was going to take them on the heavenly march, he seized the Bible under his arm and began to pace up and down the pulpit platform. The congregation immediately began with their feet a tramp, tramp, tramp, in time with the preacher's march in the pulpit, all the while singing in an undertone a hymn about marching to Zion. Suddenly he cried: "Halt!" Every foot stopped with the precision of a company of well-drilled soldiers, and the singing ceased. The morning star had been reached. Here the preacher described the beauties of that celestial body. Then the march, the tramp, the tramp, tramp, and the singing were again taken up. Another "Halt!" They had reached the evening star. And so on, past the sun and moon—the intensity of religious emotion all the time increasing—along the milky way, on up to the gates of heaven. Here the halt was longer, and the preacher described at length the gates and walls of the New Jerusalem. Then he took his hearers through the pearly gates, along the golden streets, pointing out the glories of the city, pausing occasionally to greet some patriarchal members of the church, well-known to his listeners in life, who had had "the tears wiped from their eyes, were clad in robes of spotless white, with crowns of gold upon their heads and harps within their hands" and ended his march before the great white throne.

Mr. Johnson reveals a New York that few visitors know. His description of the Club is one of the finest drawings in the book. But the chief value lies in the many revealing moments of the negro himself and his struggle toward the high road of social freedom. He "passes," and Johnson shows how and why.

The publishers have revived this earlier contribution to an understanding of American life by giving it a beautiful new garment of chaste binding. Altogether it is one of the season's unforgettable books.

H-Q.

London
End of
staggering
des. be-
und then
direct in
"caption"
arcel
ane,
un-

Here Mr.
When I
prejudice
coloured
has his
with a
turns to
his livi-
nisia-
tion—"
after all,

["THE OBSERVER, S", "London\n647", "staggering\nudes, be-\nand then\ndirect in\n'tion\narcel\nune,\nun", "THE", "W", "\"The\nMan.\"", "10s.", "This\none of\nthat\ncan be\nnovel-\nread\nassu-\nthe\nMr.\nand\nand\nand\nand\nand\nand\nand\n

N. Y. NEW REPUBLIC

FEB 1 1928

An Ex-Colored Man

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, by James Weldon Johnson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 211 pages. $3.

ALTHOUGH this remarkable revelation of the conditions which a Negro must face in America was written before Harlem existed, it furnishes indirectly an explanation of why a miniature city, with a culture and life of its own, has sprung up beyond the Park. First published anonymously in 1912, the "Autobiography" is a dispassionate statement of the educated Negro's viewpoint. The passing of fifteen years has merely enhanced its value as an interpretation of the Negro problem.

The story, which is probably not wholly autobiographical, introduces one first to a handsome, intelligent little boy in a New England town who learns of his Negro blood through the callous stupidity of a school teacher. That cruel enlightenment altered the universe for him, and precipitated him into his subsequent adventures in the intolerant South, in the Negro gambling dens of New York, and eventually in Europe. There were few phases of Negro life which this young man did not experience, and as the injustice and bitterness of anti-Negro feeling became clear to him, he finally decided to take advantage of his white skin, to desert his race, and to "pass." Without employing either rhetoric or rancor, Mr. Johnson exposes the shameful prejudices which made this "passing" advisable.

Despite the importance of the "Autobiography" as a human and sociological document, its value as a piece of literature is not equally great. In this book, though not in some of his other writings, Mr. Johnson lacks the power to convince one emotionally of the stark, hard truth of the scenes which he presents. He fumbles his climaxes, even when the material offers him superb opportunities. Moreover, he does not distinguish with sufficient clearness between the trivial and the supremely relevant. One could spare much of the long account of the hero's youth, but of the psychological reactions which accompany the phenomenon of "passing" one is told only too little. The "Autobiography" is an excellent, honest piece of work. One wishes that it were even better.

E. H. W.

BRIEFER MENTION

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN, by James Weldon Johnson (8vo, 211 pages; Knopf: $3) published anonymously in 1912, amply justifies the distinction with which it is clothed in the present re-issue. In its pages one finds most of the ore which has—in the ensuing decade and a half—been wrought into the growing structure of negro art and achievement; it is a fascinating story and a tempered study of a great problem. GOD'S TROMBONES, by the same author (8vo, 56 pages; Viking Press: $2.50) is one of the achievements foreshadowed in the autobiography—a collection of negro sermons in verse, giving literary form to the emotional exhortations of the old-time preacher. They are marked by a childlike fervour and intensity. THE DIAL—PALO 1928

THIS CLIPPING FROM

COMMERCIAL TRIBUNE

CINCINNATI, OHIO

FEB 19 1928

The second juvenile of the two mentioned above is of an entirely different sort, though it is also American history. There have been two histories in the making in the states for many years and they don't always know the most interesting things about each other, except as their paths cross. At least the white men know less of the history of the colored as apart from the whites than vice versa; and the white children know practically nothing about the whole affair. Very early in life they take on the prejudices of their elders, are in or out of sympathy with the race as a matter of family habit. It is time that people were doing a bit more thinking along this line, based on facts and not on prejudices.

There are terrific changes taking place all the time in the status of the negro race and it is the duty of every American to be informed, regardless of his opinions. A few weeks ago this column carried a review about the race problem by James Weldon Johnson. It was fabrication and a story for adults. The latest addition to this literature is a short historical and biographical work, written so that children may understand and enjoy it, but containing much material that is new to their fathers and mothers.

FOR FREEDOM—By Arthur Huff Pauset. Franklin.

The action that is going to strike at people who read this book is a gross surprise. It has been added for so long that

Whole an in-

Hainlcapa-

Harris, Odic

Hill, Living machinery.

Huc, Travels in Tartary.

Hibben, Henry Ward Beecher, an

American portrait.

Huntington & Whitney, Builders of America.

Johnson, Autobiography of an ex-colored man.

Keyerling, World in the making.

Kipling, Inclusive verse, 1885-1926.

Kuns, Automatic electrical practice.

Marquis, Archy and Mehitable.

McNabb, Women of the Middle King-

Edwin

dom. Pununzio, Immigration Crossroads.

Post, Basic facts of economics.

Rogers, Practical tanning.

Russell, Analysis of matter.

Schnee, German colonization, past and future.

Santayana, Platonism and the spiritual life.

Selekman, Postponing strikes.

Sullivan, Sir Arthur Sullivan.

Treat, Cape to Cairo.

Dr. Burris Jenkins
"The

S

Anotj
a sitting
Ex-Colo

Johnson
anonymo
comes of
It is the
color
on accou
able to d

large number of titles
the list for this week.
of humor, history,
d social sciences; we
or every one.

ical devices in the

cutting.

book for prospectors.
story of the Ameri-

nt Francis of Assis.
ition and Christianity.
trial prosperity and

otic sequel.

k in Australia.

Hill, Living machinery.

Huc, Travels in Tartary.

Marquis, Archy and Mehitable.

Edwin

Rogers, Practical tanning.

Russell, Analysis of matter.

Selekman, Postponing strikes.

Treat, Cape to Cairo.

163

N. Y. NEW REPUBLIC

FEB 1 1928

An Ex-Colored Man

E. H. W.

BRIEFER MENTION

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN, by James Weldon Johnson (8vo, 211 pages; Knopf: $3) published anonymously in 1912, amply justifies the distinction with which it is clothed in the present re-issue. In its pages one finds most of the ore which has—in the ensuing decade and a half—been wrought into the growing structure of negro art and achievement; it is a fascinating story and a tempered study of a great problem. GOD'S TROMBONES, by the same author (8vo, 56 pages; Viking Press: $2.50) is one of the achievements foreshadowed in the autobiography—a collection of negro sermons in verse, giving literary form to the emotional exhortations of the old-time preacher. They are marked by a childlike fervour and intensity.

THIS CLIPPING FROM
GAZETTE
St. Joseph, Mo.

Dr. Burris Jenkins
"The

Anot
a sitting
Ex-Colo
Johnson
anonymo
comes of
It is the
the color
on accour
able to d

Edward

Hankin, Dramatic sequel.
Harris, Outbreak in Australia.

Hill, Living machinery.

Huc, Travels in Tartary.

Marquis, Archy and Mehitable.

McNabb, Women of the Middle Kingdom.

Rogers, Practical tanning.

Russell, Analysis of matter.

Selekman, Postponing strikes.

Treat, Cape to Cairo.

JAN 28 1928

An unusually large number of titles are included in the list for this week. There is something of humor, history, art, literature, and social sciences; we hope, something for every one.

Allen, Mechanical devices in the home.

Allison, Paper cutting.

Berewitz, Handbook for prospectors.

Caldwell, Short story of the American people.

Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assis.

Erskine, Prohibition and Christianity.

Engberg, Industrial prosperity and the farmer.

Hankin, Dramatic sequel.

Hill, Living machinery.

Huc, Travels in Tartary.

Marquis, Archy and Mehitable.

Rogers, Practical tanning.

Russell, Analysis of matter.

Selekman, Postponing strikes.

Treat, Cape to Cairo.

DETROIT, MICH

DEC 25 1927

## Race Problem

Food for Contemplation Is
Found in Convincing
Autobiography.

A Review

By Jennette B. McColl.

"The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man." By James Weldon Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf.

O NE IMMEDIATELY inquires "just what is an 'ex-coloured' man?" In this particular instance, he is a man who allows his light complexion to conceal his colored ancestry and gain an entrance for him among the "whites." But the transition is not as simple as it sounds. Mr. Johnson, without limiting himself to his own personal experience, has compiled for us a composite picture of the colored man as he was some fifteen years ago, and in many cases still is. The book, which was first published in 1912, went out of print for a time, but has recently been revived. It is a most interesting and apparently accurate analysis of the race problem as seen through the eyes of a man who knows both sides of the question. According to Mr. Johnson, the solution lies not so much in educating the Negro as in changing the mental attitude of the white people. He says, "I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people understand them."

The author divides his race into three classes—first, the "desperate class," composed of ex-convicts, loafers and other undesirables. These are of a vicious nature and hate the whites as a matter of principle. Then there is the "servant class," which is connected with the whites by domestic service. This is the class best known to the white and best liked by them. But of the third, or educated Hand well-to-do class, they know little and so seem to care less. Consequently, the black Negro is judged and classified as belonging to one of the first two types, when he is judged at all.

worse than animals." For certainly the law would restrain and punish the malicious burning alive of animals."

But though he severs all connections with his race and becomes a successful musician, in his heart he still puzzles over the problem, and this book is the result.

It is well worth reading and causes one to think of what he says. The book is all the more convincing because it calmly sets forth facts and incidents in a manner remarkably free from prejudice, rather than presenting itself as an impassioned plea for a cause.

## The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

This is the story of a man whose white skin concealed the trace of Negro blood in his veins. . . The book is a study of the race problem from a new standpoint. It contains many interesting comments on this problem and some significant warnings against the dangers of race amalgamation. The outcome of the writer's change of race is not pleasing, yet it is suggestive of a new evil which may easily come from the mixing of race.
—New Orleans Picayune.

The book rests under the suspicion of being fiction. But granting, for the sake of argument, that it is fact, it contributes nothing to the literature of the race question. The writer is a bright, but superficial, observer who writes interestingly of his impressions during travels in America and Europe. He is, despite his boast that he is a traveled and accomplished man of the world, unable to see the race problem in its broader aspects, and his book is in the form of a diary that tells nothing more than the personal experiences of a shallow and self-centered individual. . . The assertion that the mistreatment of the Negroes by white persons in America is "actually and constantly forcing an unascertainable number of fair complexioned people over into the white race" is based upon ignorance of the fact that it is not by complexion alone that race is ascertainable.
—Louisville Courier-Journal.

A glimpse behind the scenes of the race-drama. The questions involved in it are slowly but surely forging to the front. They will require

Cloth: 8vo; $1.20 net; by mail, $1.30
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
Six Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts

Mr. Jonnson has given a vivid picture of the colored man in New York, the south, and even in Europe. He makes the author of this so-called autobiography a man who is sufficiently light-skinned to enable him to pass for a white man if he wishes. At first he is heart and soul with the Negro, and is content to identify himself with him. We see him endeavoring to win an education, only to abandon the project for a more lucrative position in a southern cigar factory. Then he returns to New York, becomes fascinated with the uncertain life of the gambler, but finally falls back upon his talent as a musician. While developing his skill along this line, he is whisked off to Europe by an eccentric millionaire who is interested in his ability to play jazz, which at that time was comparatively new. He finally returns, however, fired by the resolve to study the Negro and make the themes of the Negro spirituals his contribution to the musical world.

Then comes the turning point in his life. One night he is made the unwilling spectator of the lynching of a colored man which ends with the burning of the victim at the stake. Overcome with horror, he suddenly decides to desert his race, change his name, and become white. He realizes that it is not desire for personal advancement, or even fear, but shame which makes his decision for him —"shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals. For certainly the law would restrain and punish the malicious burning alive of animals."

of an Ex-Colored Man."... It is the product of an unusual and well-equipped mind. ... A story of intense human interest such as has been told before only in weakly imaginative fiction. ... So far as concerns the practical importance of the book, it is to be found chiefly in the warning account of the Negro "underworld" in the big city. ... The author drifted to New York, and the result is a description of the Negro "underworld" of the metropolis such as probably has never been written before.—*Springfield Republican*.

A powerful book ... The production of a scholar. His diction, conservative logic, and philosophical comment stamp him as a man of a trained mind. ... The book is bound to create a sensation as a fair presentation of the difficulties encountered by the superior Negro in his struggle for advancement.—*Boston Guardian* (*Negro*).

A curious and in some respects a startling tale. Whether or not it is accepted on its face value, there remains the very interesting fact that it does make an astute, dispassionate study of the race problem in the United States from the standpoint of a man who has lived on both sides of it. —*New York Times*.

If the story be a true one, it is more remarkable than any piece of fiction ever written of the colored race. ... The most wonderful story of self-revelation either in fact or fiction that has been published in many years.—*Springfield Union*.

Cloth; 8vo; $1.20 net; by mail, $1.30
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
Six Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts

Practically every phase and complexity of the race question is presented at one time or another. —*Crisis* (*Negro*).

A curious document. ... A composite presentation of the entire colored race, embracing all its various elements and showing their relations with each other and with the white race.—*Boston Transcript*.

If this is genuine, it is a remarkable human document. If it is not, it yet contains some interest. ... His experiences are of great socio-logical interest, but one cannot help feeling that if the book is not entirely fiction it contains a good deal of that element.—*Book News Monthly*.

He writes with the sense perception, the emotion, the humor, and the egotism essential to all vivid biography.—*Chicago Standard*.

The story might be fiction, so well balanced is the plot, with its artistic beginning, middle and ending.

He gives with poignant emphasis, with humor, with pathos and fine delicacy the viewpoint of the intellectual colored man, the dual personality which these two-raced men maintain—one aspect for Negro companions, another for the whites. Anyone wishing to understand the tragedy (and the triumph, too) of the bitter experience of a man with the best blood of the South running in his veins mixed with the African current, will find here a history with happenings as stirring as any romance, and as thought provoking as many a thesis on psychology.—*New York American*.

BOOK REVIEW DIGEST

MAR - 1928

James Weldon Johnson

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON, who is the author of *The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man*, has been for many years an authority on American jazz music. His brother is J. Rosamond Johnson, well-known musician, composer, the singer and arranger of Negro spirituals. The two brothers, when they were teaching school in Florida, wrote an operetta together for amusement; James Weldon wrote the lyrics and libretto, and Rosamond the music. It turned out to be so good that they came to New York City (that was in 1901) and rented a back room on West 53rd Street, which boasted one piano and one iron bedstead. George Lederer, Lillian Russell, May Irwin, and Oscar Hammerstein at separate times climbed three flights of rickety stairs to hear the comic-opera. The brothers did not succeed in selling that particular collaborative effort, but contacts which they made led to a connection with Klaw and Erlanger which lasted several years. James Weldon Johnson was United States Consul to Venezuela in 1906, and from 1909 to 1912 served as Consul at Corinto, Nicaragua. Mr. Johnson is the secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was awarded the Spingarn medal in 1925.

THE Otago Witness
Dunedin, N.Z.

2 NOV 1927

It is now revealed that "The Autobiography of an Ex-coloured Man" is by James Weldon Johnson, who has done so much to popularise the negro spirituals. The title of the book is explained by the fact that Mr Johnson, though a negro born, has a complexion so fair that he passes as a white man.

BOOK REVIEW DIGEST

MAR - 1928

J

JOHNSON, JAMES WELDON. Autobiography of an ex-coloured man; with an intro. by Carl Van Vechten. (Blue jade lib.) 211p $3 Knopf

326 Negroes. Mulattoes

27-18249

First published anonymously in 1912, this book went out of print when its original publishers withdrew from business. In the introduction to the new edition, issued under the author's name, Carl Van Vechten writes the following: "The Autobiography, of course, in the matter of specific incident, has little enough to do with Mr. Johnson's own life, but it is imbued with his own personality and feeling, his views of the subjects discussed, so that to a person who has no previous knowledge of the author's own history, it reads like real biography. It would be truer, perhaps, to say that it reads like a composite autobiography of the Negro race in the United States in modern times."

Booklist 24:174 Ja '28

"Despite the importance of the 'Autobiography' as a human and sociological document, its value as a piece of literature is not equally great. In this book, though not in some of his other writings, Mr. Johnson lacks the power to convince one emotionally of the stark, hard truth of the scenes which he presents." E. H. W.

+ — New Repub 53:303 F 1 '28 500w

"This is a dramatic situation, and Mr. Johnson, well known as an eloquent and powerful writer, has made the most of it in this pre-tended autobiography—the story of a negro who deliberately changed races. It is truth in the form of fiction; a study so rushingly written that it has all the fascination of a novel of the highest class." C. W. Thompson

+ N Y Times p14 O 16 '27 1500w

Pittsburgh Mo Bul 32:627 D '27

"An engrossing story and a quiet, unprejudiced discussion of the race question. The Jade Library is enriched by this new volume." M. W. Ovington

+ Survey 49:164 N 1 '27 580w

45

From A British Musketeer

By HAMISH MILES

MY LEXICON, George Jean Nathan: You are not reflecting on this letter. It comes from a foreign land, and from England. But it has just been reading three very remarkable columns, headed "American Literature and British Snipers," which you wrote for The American Times.

I hardly suppose you really meant them to draw the fire of any particular British musketeer. But as the "Mercury" did me the honor of sending over an advance proof of your "Clinical Notes" for the month, as if reluctant to touch off this long-range cannon without some warning to the peace-loving. I'd like to do the courtesy of standing up forthwith and levelling my freckle in your direction, in defence, at any rate, of such of my compatriot critics as were not thus favored.

Briefly, your case is this: that a spirit of permanent hostility between America and Britain is being fostered by what you term the "arbitrary snoothness, condescension and downright animosity of England and the English to almost all American literary endeavor, however worthy." For "hardly an American writer of whatever sort," you assure your readers, "can be published in England without calling forth in English newspapers and periodicals a violent nose-fingering and derision. Even the best American writers are waved aside as mere literary bounders or are denounced with a superior and offensive air as provincial amazons." And you argue, naturally, that this is a dangerous and deplorable state of affairs, and that Downing Street (presumably through the Foreign Office—or should it be the Board of Education?) ought to give the literatures responsible for it a good talking-to.

Well and good. It is satisfactory at least to find someone standing up to what you do, my dear Mr. Nathan, for the high import of letters and criticism in the national, and international, life. Believe me, it ought to be a proud day for the pen-pushers of both our countries when the trouble really comes to a head. What a grand new Tea Party will be when some fine afternoon the tea-tables of New York are whooped up a few days in America with incom- 易的, which is the tea-table of America with a large tea-kettle, and which is called as ship's-news reports, they say out and heard her in the Nara- 海洋, and have come into the welcoming depths of the English Channel, and of Spectators and New Statements, those two bales of the Time Literary Supplement, and so on. That will be a great thing, I think. After that, as we say, there will be nothing for it but War.

But what is your evidence of the plot? Who are these persecuted American authors? Which are the English journals that cock their derisive heads at bare mention of their names? When you declare that there are scores of English critics, great and small, who "lose no opportunity to deride and insult American writers, denying them fair criticism and giving them instead only the ready-made and rubber-stamp aspersions, disparagements, sneers and ecatallics," or further that "the literary critics of the London weeklies laugh sarcastically and ob-s trepiously when an American happens to mention the name of Cabell or Sherwood Anderson or Dreiser,"—why, you are simply bominating happily in a great void. I defy you to name one single journal of any literary repute in this country, whether a standard and conservative organ like the Times Literary Supplement, or a compara- tively "advanced" one like the Nation or New Statesman, or a half-way house like the Saturday Review, or a frankly popular book-news weekly like John o' London's, or an organ of purely critical ideas like the Monthly Criterion—to name a single one which could not be called a journal of such a such futile attitude as you gratuitously suggest.

(You might perhaps point to the lacer- ated bodies of Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein and Anita Loos, left on the stricken field by Wyndham Lewis after his onslaught in the last issue of his one-man review The Enemy. But nobody could in- terpret them as a strictly anti-American gesture: after all, there was quite an international sort of holocaust, and you will find also in the debris the bodies of the Englishman D. H. Lawrence, the German Spengler, the Frenchman Bergson, ...)

But "literary bounders!" And "provin- cial amateurs!" Nobody, my dear Mr. Nathan, of the slightest literary importance in this country has talked of such things for years and years! Your information is utterly demoted. Do you suppose that the

Rev. Sydney Smith is still chirruping at the literary dinner-tables? The claims of mod- ern American writers to be heard in Eng- land, as Americans, and as writers, are perfectly well established. I have a time to poke about from where I am now sitting and pick up, absolutely and honestly at random, a few recent issues of London weeklies. Here they are: three of the Times Literary Supplement, and four of the New Statesman, all dated February or March, 1928. It is a fair cross-section. And if I clipped the relevant reviews and articles just from these seven unselected numbers for you, what would you find?

(1) A serious and commendatory re- view of Dreiser's "Chains"—part of a uniform edition of his works at present being issued, set-up and printed here by Constable. (T. L. S.)

(2) Another, critical, but not in the least derisive or nose-fingering, of the same Dreiser volume. (N. S.)

(3) Commendatory review of a re-issue of John Weldon Johnson's "Auto-biography of an Ex-Colored Man." (T. L. S.)

(4) Do. do. of John W. Vandercook's "Black Majesty." (N. S.)

(5) Do. do. of "Best Short Stories of 1927, American," with special praise of Ernest Hemingway and Lyle Saxon. (N. S.)

(6) Do. do. of a re-issue of "The Edu- cation of Henry Adams," drawing attention to its importance in a study of "the modern American consciousness." (N. S.)

(7) Do. do. of H. L. Menckin's "Prej- udices: Sixth Series." (N. S.)

(8) A whole column of shrewd and careful appraisal, fully appreci- ative of a one-volume edition of O. Henry's complete works. (T. L. S.)

(9) Five careful and obviously expert reviews of books of scholarship, from American University Press. (T. L. S. and N. S.)

(10) About twenty short reviews of less important fiction, mainly detective or Western stories, of American origin.

And I give you my word, suspect though it may be, that I cannot detect in any one Christian-name talk of the English giants with whom I may or may not have shaken hands. But tourism—and lecturers are hardly more—are not a fit sample to judge a nation by: as even we over here are slowly beginning to learn. And you ought to know very well the most-ad- vertised names are not always the most

Objectionable because, my dear Mr. Na- than, you seem to me to be talking in pure ignorance. Admittedly, you may have cause for temporary or local irritation of some sort. You mention, for instance, the timepiece ways of certain touring English lecturers. Believe me, I know very well how painful a creature the visiting lecturer in the States can be if he has lived, but never lectured, there myself—and more than once have I felt hot and cold all over at the spectacle of some whippedper from London lording it at a luncheon of the New York literati, with his intimate name-name talk of the English giants with whom he may or may not have shaken hands. But tourism—and lecturers are hardly more—are not a fit sample to judge a nation by: as even we over here are slowly beginning to learn. And you ought to know very well the most-ad- vertised names are not always the most

And when you mention the names of two or three English writers who write this evil thing as clearly as yourself, you only make it clearer still, my dear Mr. Nathan, that your knowledge of England is ex- tremely scrappy and haphazard. Your imaginary picture of Messrs. Hugh Wal- pole, St. John Ervine and J. B. Priestley having "a rough time of it" amongst their colleagues because of their magnificent courage in battling for a cause so throug- oughly established as this one, is, as the old saying goes, a subject for Max Beer- bohm. ... And whom are these hard- pressed paladins of young America's litera- ture best by? Apparently by no fewer than one hundred and two virulent Ameri- can-baiters, amongst the tremendous forms of Arnold Bennett and G. K. Ches-

(Continued on next page)

Every reader of the F
this new volume. In it
the story of Mr. J.
I am a career as editor, publish-
ing fully heaving his inci-
dent the narrative which is
days already described.

The result is an af-
mation of a remarkable
dispensable to every o-
umes who wishes to co-

—a certain social world turned up
some things happened. Old Uncle
J. nephew Francis had locked hor-
battle until finally the young rail-
home and home. Then life took hold
of a startling metamorphosis: tur-
ning the "boiled owl" into a successfu-
the staid old philanthropist a
force single-handed.

Everyone who enjoys
and Shepherds w
by this new

By Marie Com
SHEA

At All Bookstores, $2.00