The Negro Novel in America

by Robert A. Bone

The Negro Novel in America is Robert A. Bone’s influential critical survey of African American fiction from the late nineteenth century through the mid‑twentieth century. First published by Yale University Press in 1958 and later revised in 1965, the book offers one of the earliest comprehensive overviews of the Black novelistic tradition. Bone examines major writers including Charles W. Chesnutt, W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin, tracing how their work reflects shifting cultural, political, and aesthetic movements.

Written in a clear and accessible scholarly style, the study combines literary analysis, historical context, and critical interpretation. It remains a foundational resource for students, instructors, and researchers interested in African American literature, modern American fiction, and the development of the protest novel and postwar narrative forms.

Robert A. Bone (1924–2007) was a literary scholar whose work helped establish African American literature as a recognized field of academic study. He taught at Yale, UCLA, and Columbia, and his writings continue to be cited for their insight into American literary history.

299 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1958

Reviews

[Anne]

Hard to review this nicely written artifact, first synoptic (Phylon says) overview of Af Am novelistic prose works. Certes, it is opinionated; voice is part of its charms, the near-bloggy tone it uses, though it was grafted from a diss. A good deal of airtime is spent aligning postwar prose in terms of the "protest" novel. New Criticism is interestingly used--the symbolism of the objective correlative, for instance, in Wright. There is a sociological backbone, and one knows straightaway where Bone's evaluations lie. Reviewers don't seem to expect the sometime irony of his tone--interpreting it as empiricism, and thus fact. Bone has little tolerance for feminized novels of bourgeois decadance (e.g. Jessie Fauset), but also is very cautious about other kinds of aesthetic autonomy. His other writings are on Washington Irving, elsewhere, and are quite interesting on history and inner life...