Book-of-the-Month Club

The Book-of-the-Month Club was both a major route to publication and an editorial force in the early history of Native Son. Its interest helped turn Richard Wright’s novel into a widely circulated book, but its requested changes also reshaped the text: the published version omitted material from an early movie-theater scene and revised passages elsewhere, including the trial speech. The Club’s role therefore joined commercial reach to intervention in what readers encountered as the novel.

Institutional Role and Selection

The Club’s influence emerged during the transition from manuscript to publication. Wright sent an outline of Native Son to Harper & Brothers in February 1938 and delivered the final typescript in June 1939. By August 1939, Harper & Brothers had prepared bound page proofs for the Club, initially intending them as a reviewer’s copy for a fall publication that had already been announced. The Club’s expressed interest, however, led the publisher to delay the date while the organization deliberated.

By January 1940, the Club had decided to accept the novel. Native Son appeared on March 1, 1940, with an introduction by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, as a dual selection. It had also been described as a main selection in 1940. These accounts mark the Club’s prominent place in the novel’s release: its decision was not simply a notice of an already available book, but part of the process that set the publication timetable and helped determine the edition that reached readers.

Requested Revisions

The Club’s most consequential intervention concerned a scene early in the novel. In August 1939, Harper & Brothers editor Aswell conveyed the Club’s objection to that passage and suggested that Wright imply rather than explicitly describe what occurred. The concern was framed as a matter of the scene’s rawness, and the exchange shows how the prospect of selection brought editorial expectations directly into the preparation of the book.

The scene in the typescripts and proofs was substantially different from the one eventually published. Wright rewrote it around a passing reference to a newsreel and a longer description of the feature film The Gay Woman. In the earlier version, the newsreel featured Mary Dalton; the rewritten scene removed that reference and the scene’s mention of masturbation. The change was not confined to a single passage: it required further revisions later in the novel, including to the prosecutor’s speech at Bigger’s trial. The Club’s requested alteration thus changed both a scene’s content and its connections to the book’s later courtroom material.

Other requested edits included toning down explicit sexual language, changing plot details, and shortening the speeches of Bigger’s lawyer and the district attorney. Wright also added a few paragraphs. Some alterations may have been made to avoid resetting long stretches of type, so the revisions reflected both judgments about content and practical conditions of publication. By September, Aswell considered the revisions sufficient to address the essential concerns. He also raised the question of Bigger’s articulateness at the ending, but recommended leaving Wright’s treatment as it stood.

Publication Text and Editorial Consequences

The Club’s decision shaped not only the release date but the textual record of Native Son. After Wright reviewed a new set of proofs in November 1939, the Club accepted the revised novel. Harper & Brothers published that text on March 1, 1940. The edition represented in the volume described by the editorial account is based on bound proofs sent to the Club in August 1939, with three later corrections to Chicago street references incorporated. Those corrections changed Adams Street to Seventh Street, northward to westward, and the spelling HALSTEAD to HALSTED. The Club-related revisions, by contrast, remained in all subsequent editions.

The changes also affected the novel’s international publication. Victor Gollancz Ltd had rejected the first, uncorrected proofs. After Wright made the changes for the Club, Harper & Brothers sent a revised set, which Victor Gollancz Ltd accepted. The episode shows how an intervention made for one influential American readership could influence the book’s prospects beyond the United States as well.

Reach, Reception, and Significance

In 1940, Native Son sold about 250,000 copies, most of them reportedly to Club members. The Club therefore supplied a substantial audience, although the book’s reception exposed a gap between expectation and content: sales fell sharply, according to one report, when prospective buyers realized that the novel was not an entertaining detective story but a serious and harrowing work. Reviews were generally favorable and noted its violence and gloom. The scale of distribution did not make the novel easier reading or guarantee that its buyers wanted the work they had received.

The Book-of-the-Month Club’s place in the novel’s history is consequently double-edged. Its selection helped carry Native Son to a readership far larger than a routine publication might have reached, while its editorial requests changed scenes, language, plot details, and the lengths of the trial speeches. Those interventions became embedded in the standard published text. The Club was not the novel’s author, but its selection process helped determine the form in which the novel first reached a mass audience and continued to circulate.