Charles W. Chesnutt to Richard W. Gilder, 24 April 1899
| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| alterations to base text (additions or deletions) | added or deleted text |
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added text | Deleted text Added text |
| position of added text (if not added inline) | [right margin] text added in right margin; [above line] text added above the line |
| proofreading mark | ‸ |
| page number, repeated letterhead, etc. | page number or repeated letterhead |
| supplied text | [supplied text] |
| archivist note | archivist note |
CHAS. W. CHESNUTT,
1024 SOCIETY FOR SAVINGS BLDG.
4777
Cleveland, O. April 24th, 189
Dear Mr. Gilder:-
17250
85
34
4250
I send you herewith the manuscript of a story, or perhaps I ought to say a sketch, entitled, "The March of Progress," with the hope that you may be able to use it in the Century.1 It does not pretend to "atmosphere", but is a plain story of plain people, although I think that gratitude is a fine theme and not overworked.
My book "The Conjure Woman," which is on Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.'s Spring list, is doing very well, and has been invariably commended by the newspaper reviewers, and by some of the best of them at considerable length and in pronounced terms.2 The tales are different from this however, which is more on the order of "The Wife of His Youth", which you were good enough to read and give me your opinion about. If this story is unavailable, kindly return the manuscript at as early a date as convenient, and oblige
Yours very truly, Chas. W. Chesnutt. Mr. R.W. Gilder, Editor "The Century Magazine," New York.Correspondent: Richard Watson Gilder (1844–1909) was the editor of The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine from 1881 until his death. Under his leadership, The Century became one of the most influential general-interest magazines in the United States. In 1889, Gilder rejected an essay by Chesnutt and in 1890 he rejected "Rena Walden." Both had come to him via George Washington Cable. Of the essay, "An Inside View of the Negro Question," Gilder wrote to Cable, it is "so timely and so political—in fact so partisan—that we cannot handle it. It should appear at once somewhere." He also gave his comments on "Rena Walden," in a letter to Cable, which Cable shared with Chesnutt. In 1901, Gilder accepted the short story "The March of Progress" for publication in the Century.
1. "The March of Progress" had been accepted three years earlier by Walter Hines Page for the Atlantic Monthly. Chesnutt expected it to appear in that magazine sometime in 1898, but in November of that year Page wrote that he would prefer to publish a conjure story. Chesnutt then sent "The March of Progress" to The Century. [back]
2. In its first year of publication, The Conjure Woman received more than seventy reviews, including in major city newspapers (e.g., the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Atlanta Constitution, and the San Francisco Chronicle) and in weekly and monthly magazines. [back]
