Richard Wright: Books and Writers

This bibliography of Richard Wrights 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 friends 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 Wrights biographer and foremost Wright scholar details the volumes in Wrights library and the facts of Wrights 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 Wrights library for he includes also titles drawn from references in Wrights 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.