Charles W. Chesnutt to Richard W. Gilder, 19 May 1899
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT,
Your letter announcing that you could use my story "The March of Progress" gave me very great pleasure, for I regard it as a very high privilege to appear in the columns of the "Century." I thank you sincerely for your frank criticism of the art of the story, and to show that I have tried to profit by it, I have re-written the first two paragraphs, and have made a new one which I would like to have substituted, if you think it better, for the rather bald paragraph which you very correctly liken to an obituary notice — it needs only the suggestion to emphasize the likeness. I should be glad to see a proof of the story, if convenient, before it is published.1 I should like my first story in the "Century" to make a good impression, and to have the art lag not too far behind the interest.
Sincerely yours, Chas. W. Chesnutt.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]
