This bibliography of Richard Wright's library and reading serves as
a key to understanding the development, philosophies, and
aesthetics of this great writer and provides accurate information
for the study of intertextuality in his works.
Richard Wright, born in Mississippi in 1908, was largely
self-taught. His only formal schooling was high school. As he
recounts in "Black Boy," he used a white friend's library card at
the Memphis Public Library, where blacks were not allowed. That
books were almost "living companions" for Wright is easily
understandable. Through books and, later, through relationships
with writers, he broadened his perspectives, his understanding of
society, and the very craft of writing. In the history of Richard
Wright, perhaps more than with other writers, a knowledge of what
he actually read, and of what authors he preferred, is essential in
explaining his intellectual development.
Michel Fabre, Wright's biographer and foremost Wright scholar,
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 Paris, books Wright deemed required
reading for a growing novelist, gift books, and others in a
comprehensive list on such subjects as contemporary American
literature, classic European works, criminology, psychiatry, and
social sciences. 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 accounts 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. They show his appreciation of
diverse genres and styles, although his ideological commitment
remained the same. In them one sees Wright as an author ready to
help younger writers, black and white, American and French.
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