ABSTRACT
One truth concerning the Negro author and his publisher seems to be that before Richard Wright’s success with Native Son no Negro writer has made a living from creative writing. Phillis Wheatley’s poetry went into numerous editions, but many of these editions were posthumous. Her brief years of writing could hardly be considered a professional author’s career. The narratives of ex-slaves in frequent instances had wide sales, but it is likely that some of the authors shared profits with “ghost” writers who edited and “doctored” these autobiographies, and that those fugitives who wrote authentic autobiographies returned a goodly portion of their receipts into the coffers of anti-slavery organizations, more honor to them. Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown made money from their writing certainly, Douglass telling us that at the end of the Civil War he still had some money saved from his royalties on My Bondage and My Freedom. But they had supplemented this out with lecturing and journalism, and could hardly be considered men of letters making a livelihood from writing. After her eloquent lecturing and readings, Frances Watkins Harper sold large numbers of her poems printed as small throwaways. The audience for this type of work was composed largely of people already or willing to be convinced, and propaganda rather than profit was the high motive of the authors.
