RICHARD WRIGHT: BOOKS & WRITERS. de Fabre, Michel. (Richard Wright.) - 1990

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990. 299 pp, 9 1/4" H. "Richard Wright, born in Mississippi in 1908, was largely self-taught. In this valuable work Michel Fabre, Wright's biographer and foremost among Wright scholars, details the volumes in Wright's library, and the facts of Wright's reading habits. This listing of books that formed and influenced him includes second-hand books he bought while living in extreme poverty in Chicago, some borrowed books never returned, books purchased in New York and in Paris, books Wright deemed required reading for a growing novelist, gift books, and others in a wide and comprehensive list on such subjects as contemporary American literature, classic European works, Afro-American studies, psychology, psychiatry, criminology, and social sciences. (D)etails information about when and where the volumes were acquired. In compiling this listing Fabre goes beyond the actual contents of Wright's library, for he includes also titles drawn from references in Wright's works and from the testimonies of people who knew him and his reading habits. Included also is an appendix that collects for the first time reviews written by Wright, his prefaces, forewords, and blurbs. In them one sees Wright as an author ready to help younger writers, black and white, American and French." This is an unread book, removed from publisher's shrinkwrap for cataloguing.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Near Fine.