Charles W. Chesnutt to Fleta Harrison, 27 October 1921
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October 27, 1921.
Miss Fleta Harrison,
502 N. Pine Street,
San Antonio, Texas.
Dear Miss Harrison:-
Replying to your letter of October 20th, I beg to say that you can get a copy of my book "The House Behind the Cedars"1 by writing to Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company, 5 Park Street, Boston, Mass.,2 and enclosing them a check or money order for $1.85, the price of the book being $1.75 and the ten cents to cover the postage.3
Yours respectfully,Correspondent: Fleta Harrison (b. 1903) is listed at the given San Antonio address as the 17-year-old niece of Alexander Harrison, a Black farmer, in the census of 1920. By the 1930 census, she is double-listed as living with her parents and working as a maid. No additional information about her life has been found.
1. The House Behind the Cedars (Houghton Mifflin, 1900) was Chesnutt's first published novel. House evolved over more than a decade from a short story, "Rena Walden," first drafted in the late 1880s. It was the only novel by Chesnutt to be serialized, once in 1900-1901 in the monthly Self Culture and again in 1921-1922 in the Black weekly Chicago Defender. House was also his only novel to be adapted to film (1924 and 1932). [back]
2. Houghton Mifflin Company had its roots in Ticknor and Fields, a notable publishing house founded in 1832 in Boston, Massachusetts. By 1880, Houghton, Mifflin & Company (later incorporated as Houghton Mifflin Company) had become a major force in U.S. publishing, a position strengthened when it began to publish textbooks in the 1890s. The firm published both of Chesnutt's short story collections and two of his three novels, and as publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, several of his individual short stories. Chesnutt corresponded with the company from 1891 to 1931, often but not always with specific employees. [back]
3. The original price for The Conjure Woman was $1.25; The Wife of His Youth cost $1.50, as did each of Chesnutt's three novels. Several letters from 1921 indicate that Chesnutt was aware that the prices had increased to $1.50 and $1.75, respectively, but two surviving annual copyright statements sent to Chesnutt by Houghton Mifflin Company for 1921 and 1922 indicate that the price forThe Conjure Woman had further increased to $2.00, and for The Wife of His Youth and The House Behind the Cedars to $3.00. The new edition of the The Conjure Woman published in 1928 cost $5.00. [back]
