The Weary Blues; Not Without Laughter; The Ways of White Folks - (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics) by Langston Hughes (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A major hardcover compendium of poetry and fiction by the legendary Black American poet of the Harlem Renaissance

One of the most important writers to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes may be best known as a poet, but he was also a brilliant storyteller, blending elements of blues and jazz, speech and song, into a triumphant and wholly original idiom. Perhaps more than any other writer, Langston Hughes made the white America of the 1920s and 1930s aware of the Black culture thriving in its midst. Hughes's poetry and fiction works are messages from that America, sharply etched vignettes of its daily life, cruelly accurate portrayals of Black and white collisions.

This Everyman's Library compendium comprises Hughes's debut poetry collection, The Weary Blues, which catapulted him into literary stardom at just twenty-four years old; his award-winning debut novel, Not Without Laughter, published in 1930 to critical raves; and his 1933 collection of short stories The Ways of White Folks, currently only available in Vintage Classics trade paperback.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.

Review Quotes

"Langston Hughes is a titanic figure in 20th-century American literature . . . A powerful interpreter of the American experience."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"[Hughes] is sumptuous and sharp, playful and sparse, grounded in an earthy music."
--The Boston Globe

"[Hughes's] poetry has a pulse, a beauty and familiar kindness. . . . Much of it delights, even dazzles. His best work sticks with you--forever."
--Cleveland Plain Dealer

About the Author

Langston Hughes (1902-1967), one of the great poets of the Harlem Renaissance, was born in Joplin, Missouri, and spent much of his childhood in Kansas before moving to Harlem. He wrote poetry, short stories, novels, an autobiography, songs, essays, and plays. Among his numerous awards and honors were a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935, a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1940, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Grant in 1947.

About the Introducer: Dr. Joshua Bennett is a poet and scholar who has won numerous awards for his work on the classics of Black American literature. As both a teacher and student of Langston Hughes's work, as well as the work of his contemporaries, we're thrilled to have him on board to write this introduction. Dr. Bennett is the author of The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016)--which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is also the author of Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020), Owed (Penguin, 2020), The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022) and Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, 2023). He has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He is a Professor of Literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT.