Charles W. Chesnutt to William T. Couch, 3 April 1931
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April 3, 1931
Mr. W. T. Couch, Asst. Director,
The University of North Carolina Press,
Chapel Hill, N. C.
Dear Mr. Couch:
I beg to acknowledge your letter of March 30th with reference to my story "Sis' Becky's Pickaninny,"1 and thank you for the copy of "Stories of the South" which followed it.2 It puts me in excellent company, and I am glad to add it to my library.
I notice you gave the date of my birth as 1856. This adds two years to my age, which is already uncomfortably old.
If you have seen a copy of the March number of "The Colophon," you will have observed that in an article from my pen in that magazine3 I have paid a high compliment to a very distinguished North Carolinian4 who promoted the publication of "The Conjure Woman," of which "Sis' Becky's Pickaninny" forms a part.5
Cordially yours,Correspondent: William Terry Couch (1901–1988), an alumnus of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, was an academic editor, and became assistant director and then director (1932–1945) at the University of North Carolina Press. He later became an editor at the University of Chicago Press and Colliers' Encyclopedia.
1. Chesnutt's story "Sis' Becky's Pickaninny" was first published in The Conjure Woman in 1899; it was included as the fourteenth story in Stories of the South: Old and New (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1931), 294–308. [back]
2. Stories of the South: Old and New was a 1931 anthology of 27 stories edited by Addison Hibbard (1887–1945), English professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (1918–1930) and later at Northwestern University (1930–1945) who specialized in Southern U.S. literature. [back]
3. The Colophon: A Book Collector's Quarterly was a high-quality, high-cost periodical edited by Elmer Adler (1884–1962), a book collector and graphic designer. Published in its original large format only from 1930 until 1935 (and only sporadically between 1935 and 1948), it included Chesnutt's essay "Post Bellum, Pre-Harlem" in Part 5 (February 1931). The Colophon was available only by subscription ($15 a year), and at the height of its success printed in runs of three thousand copies (parts 5–12). [back]
4. Walter Hines Page (1855–1918) was a renowned journalist and editor who was born in North Carolina and rose to fame in the publishing worlds of Boston and New York. In 1895, he began working for Houghton, Mifflin & Company as literary editor, and eventually as editor-in-chief of their flagship magazine, the Atlantic Monthly. He left in 1899 and eventually founded his own publishing house with a partner, Frank Nelson Doubleday (1862–1934), named Doubleday, Page & Co. He was its vice president until 1913, when he became U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. Chesnutt and Page corresponded regularly from 1897 to 1905, but only sporadically afterwards. [back]
5. Chesnutt's collection of short stories, The Conjure Woman, was published by Houghton, Mifflin & Company in March 1899. [back]
