Includes bibliographical references (pages 27-28).

The stories in "The Conjure Woman" were Charles W. Chesnutt's first great literary success. Since their initial publication in 1899 they have come to be seen as some of the most remarkable works of African American literature from the Emancipation through the Harlem Renaissance. Less well known though, is that "The Conjure Woman" was not wholly Chesnutt's creation but a work shaped and selected by his editors.This edition reassembles for the first time all of Chesnutt's work in the conjure tell genre, the entire imaginative feat of which the published "Conjure Woman" forms a part. It also allows the reader to see how the published volume was created, how an African American author negotiated with the tastes of the dominant literary culture of the late nineteenth century, and how that culture both promoted and delimited his work. -- From publisher's description.

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