"Finally, we have Charles W. Chesnutt's conjure woman stories as he wrote them, not as Houghton Mifflin edited them. This collection is a landmark in American literary publishing for it helps us to understand the pressures exerted upon all authors and especially on African American writers. More important, these wonderful stories are now available to a new generation of readers."--Cathy N. Davidson

Introduction 1
Chronology of Composition 23
A Note on the Text 25
Selected Bibliography 27
The Conjure Woman
The Goophered Grapevine 31
Po' Sandy 44
Mars Jeems's Nightmare 55
The Conjurer's Revenge 70
Sis' Becky's Pickaninny 82
The Gray Wolf's Ha'nt 94
Hot-Foot Hannibal 107
Related Tales
Dave's Neckliss 123
A Deep Sleeper 136
Lonesome Ben 146
The Dumb Witness 158
A Victim of Heredity; or, Why the Darkey Loves Chicken 172
Tobe's Tribulations 183
The Marked Tree 194

Charles W. Chesnutt (1858- 1932) is the author of The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories (1899), The House Behind the Cedars (1900), The Marrow of Tradition (1901), and Colonel's Dream (1905).

Richard H. Brodhead, Professor of English at Yale University, is the author of numerous books about nineteenth-century American Literature, including Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America.