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[Review of The Conjure Woman]

THE CONJURE WOMAN. By Charles W. Chesnutt. With a Foreword by J. E. Spingarn. Boston: The Houghton Mifflin Company. vii + 229 pp.

Of the author of The Conjure Woman, originally published in 1899, Mr. Spingarn says: "Mr. Chesnutt's novels . . . are the first novels in which an American of Negro descent has in any real sense portrayed the fortunes of his race. . . . The Conjure Woman is the earliest of his novels, and is quite different from its successors. It is folktale pure and simple, but folktale most delightfully and whimsically told. . . . He was the first Negro novelist, and he is still the best."