The House Behind the Cedars

Charles W. Chesnutt

Penguin, Apr 1, 1993 - Fiction - 224 pages

An early masterwork among American literary treatments of miscegenation, Chesnutt’s story is of two young African Americans who decide to pass for white in order to claim their share of the American dream.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Contents

• A Stranger from South Carolina: 1
• An Evening Visit: 10
• The Old Judge: 22
• Down the River: 25
• The Tournament: 31
• The Queen of Love and Beauty: 40
• Mid New Surroundings: 43
• The Courtship: 46
• Doubts and Fears: 53
• The Dream: 60
• A Letter and a Journey: 65
• Tryon Goes to Patesville: 70
• An Injudicious Payment: 78
• A Loyal Friend: 84
• Mine Own People: 89
• The Bottom Falls Out: 95
• Two Letters: 100
• Under the Old Regime: 104
• God Made Us All: 119
• Digging Up Roots: 127
• A Gilded Opportunity: 130
• Imperative Business: 137
• The Guest of Honor: 141
• Swing Your Partners: 148
• Balance All: 153
• The Schoolhouse in the Woods: 156
• An Interesting Acquaintance: 160
• The Lost Knife: 163
• Plato Earns Halfa Dollar: 168
• An Unusual Honor: 174
• In Deep Waters: 179
• The Power of Love: 185
• A Mule and a Cart: 188

About the author

Judith Jackson Fossett, associate professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, is the author of Illuminated Darkness: Slavery and Its Shadows in Nineteenth-Century America and the editor of Race Consciousness: African-American Studies for the New Century.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The House Behind the Cedars; Penguin Classics; Penguin twentieth-century classics
• Author: Charles W. Chesnutt
• Contributor: Donald B. Gibson
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 1993
• ISBN: 0140186859, 9780140186857
• Length: 224 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Social Science / Discrimination; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / American / African American & Black Studies