Charles W. Chesnutt to Harcourt, Brace and Company, 12 November 1921
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November 12, 1921.
Harcourt, Brace and Company,
1 West 47th Street,
New York.
Dear Sirs:
Enclosed please find M.S. of a short novel or romance of old New Orleans entitled "Marchand, F. M. C." which I would like to offer you for publication.1 I should have preferred the title "The Honor of the Family," but the name has been used by no less a writer than Balzac.2 Perhaps "The Family Honor" might be a better title than the one I have used.
If you can see your way to put this book on your list, I shall consider myself very fortunate.
I enclose postage for return in case you do|n'ot find it available.
Correspondent: Harcourt, Brace and Company, originally founded as Harcourt, Brace and Howe in 1919 and renamed in 1921, was named after the two White East coast editors who founded it, Alfred Harcourt (1881—1954) and Donald Brace (1881—1955). Joel Spingarn (1875—1939), White professor of comparative literature at Columbia University who was board chairman (and later president) of the NAACP and knew Chesnutt personally, was the company's first vice president. They specialized in contemporary American literature and in textbooks. They never offered Chesnutt a contract, but they published one of the first textbooks to anthologize Black literature, which included two of his short stories: Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges, ed. Otelia Cromwell, Lorenzo Dow Turner, and Eva B. Dykes (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931), 59—84.
1. Chesnutt's manuscript for his novel Paul Marchand, F. M. C. was rejected by three major publishing companies: Houghton Mifflin Company; Harcourt, Brace and Company; and Alfred A. Knopf. It was never published during his lifetime. The novel is set in antebellum New Orleans and its eponymous protagonist is a mixed-race "free man of color" (F. M. C.). [back]
2. The 1842 novel by the French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), La Rabouilleuse (English title The Black Sheep or The Two Brothers) was adapted for the stage by French playwright Émile Fabre (1869–1955) in 1903. The English version of that play was titled The Honor of the Family and first performed on Broadway in 1908. It was also made into a (lost) silent movie by the Rex Motion Picture company in 1913. [back]
