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First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
List of contents
A Note on the Text, Acknowledgments, Chapter One: Introduction, Chapter Two: Background of the Negro Renaissance, Chapter Three: The Beginnings of the Negro Renaissance, Chapter Four: Some Important Aspects of the Negro Renaissance, Chapter Five: Enter Carl Van Vechten, Chapter Six: Carl Van Vechten Presents the New Negro, Chapter Seven: My Only Serious Novel- Nigger Heaven, Chapter Eight: The Influence of Nigger Heaven Upon Harlem Renaissance Authors, Chapter Nine: Conclusion, Bibliography, Index
About the author
Leon Coleman
Summary
This book evaluates Carl Van Vechten's contribution to the Harlem Renaissance by presenting hitherto unexamined documentary evidence. The author draws on correspondence, manuscripts, personal memorabilia, and published materials to examine the origins and development of the period in the 1920s which was termed the New Negro Renaissance. In the later years of the 1920s, as a result of the success of his novel, Nigger Heaven, Carl Van Vechten received extensive publicity associating him with Harlem and with the Harlem Renaissance. The vehement controversy which the book aroused among African American critics and the black press, who attacked it, and the African American authors and friends of Van Vechten who defended it, obscured the true extent of Van Vechten's role in the Harlem Renaissance. This study sheds light on the Van Vechten controversy which has continued to the present day. (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1969; revised with new preface)
