2 Charles W. Chesnutt first editions are documented on this shelf, from The Conjure Woman (1899) to The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899). Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Charles W. Chesnutt title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Charles W. Chesnutt copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

The Conjure Woman — 1899 · Houghton, Mifflin and CompanyFirst trade edition, first printing, a small octavo collating [4],229 pages, with a dated title page. Bound in publisher's brown cloth, the upper board pictorially stamped in orange and black, titles lettered in gilt. Gathers seven interlinked dialect stories: 'The Goophered Grapevine,' 'Po' Sandy,' 'Mars Jeems's Nightmare,' 'The Conjurer's Revenge,' 'Sis' Becky's Pickaninny,' 'The Gray Wolf's Ha'nt,' and…. A large-paper issue limited to 150 numbered copies and a London edition (Gay & Bird) were also published in 1899; dealer descriptions do not agree on the exact sequence of the large-paper issue relative to the trade printing, so this entry follows the standard trade first printing described above, which is how the book is normally collected and cataloged.
The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line — 1899 · Houghton, Mifflin and CompanyFirst edition, first printing, published November 27, 1899. Bound in publisher's pale red (rose) cloth stamped in red and lettered in gilt, with a frontispiece and three additional full-page illustrations by Clyde O. De Land. The collection gathers nine short stories, including the title story (first serialized in the Atlantic Monthly, July 1898) and 'The Sheriff's Children' (first published in The Independent,….

More Literary Fiction (US) & Award Winners shelves: Charles Willeford, Charles Williams, Charlotte Brontë (as 'Currer Bell'), Charlotte M. Yonge, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Christopher Isherwood.

← All authors · All genres · part of the First-Edition Identification resource.