[Review of The Wife of His Youth]

It is less than a year since Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt of Cleveland, published, through Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., his volume of "Conjure Woman" stories. This book attracted wide attention, and promptly gave its writer a place in the front rank of those who have contributed to our knowledge of negro life and character. Before this Mr. Chesnutt had published, in the Atlantic and elsewhere, short stories of marked originality and power, dealing in one way and another with the negro race and its blendings with the white. A collection of these stories taking the name from one of the most memorable of them, "The Wife of His Youth," will be issued in the autumn by Mr. Chesnutt's first publishers. Still another work, upon which he is now engaged, is a life of Frederick A. Douglass for the series of "Beacon Biographies," published by 'Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co. Through his sympathies and acquirements there is probably no writer in the country more competent than Mr. Chesnutt to treat this picturesque subject, and the result of his undertaking can hardly fail to draw to itself readers.