To Be an Author: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1889-1905Collected in this volume are the 1889 1905 letters of one of the first African American literary artists to cross the color line into the de facto segregated American publishing industry of the turn of the century. Selected for inclusion are those chronicling the rise of Charles W. Chesnutt (1858 1932), an attorney and businessman in Cleveland, Ohio, who achieved prominence as a novelist, short story writer, essayist, and lecturer despite the