The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line

<p><I>The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line</I> (1899) is a collection of short stories by African American writer lawyer and political activist Charles Chesnutt. Originally published in a July 1888 edition of <I>The Atlantic</I>-in which in 1887 Chesnutt became the first African American to have a story published in its pages-The Wife of His Youth has become the author's most frequently anthologized story. <I>The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line</I> contains nine stories and three essays by Charles Chesnutt a pioneer of African American literature. The title story of the collection follows Mr. Ryder a light skinned man living in a city in the American Midwest. The founder of the Blue Veins Society a local club whose members consist of black men with European ancestry Mr. Ryder plans to propose to a beautiful mixed-race woman named Molly Dixon. As the day of the Blue Vein Ball approaches-he hopes to propose on stage while giving a speech-Ryder meets an older black woman named Liza Jane who assisted her husband Sam Taylor in escaping north before the Civil War but never heard from him again. The Passing of Grandison another story in the collection is a tale of racial passing set in the 1850s that follows a slave who travels to Canada with the help of a white man. <I>The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line</I> is a masterful work of short fiction and essay writing from a pioneer of African American literature..<p>Since our inception in 2020 Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover all while maintaining the integrity of the original book. <p>With thousands of titles in our collection we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.</p>