Arna (Wendell) Bontemps - Works

Writer, anthologist, and librarian, born in Alexandria, Louisiana, USA. Raised in California, he studied at Pacific Union College there (BA). In 1923 his first published poetry was ‘Crisis’ in the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, edited by W E B Du Bois. His ‘Golgatha Is a Mountain’ (1925) won the Alexander Pushkin Award. He spent most of his career as the librarian and public relations director at Fisk University in Nashville, TN, and was a guest lecturer at various universities. His novels include God Sends Sunday (1931) and Black Thunder (1936); the former was dramatized by Countee Cullen as St Louis Woman (1946) and then set to music as Blues Opera. He edited American Negro Poetry and published several anthologies with Langston Hughes. (Their extensive correspondence was published in 1980.) He also wrote several children's books with Jack Conroy, including Sam Patch (1951). His Story of the Negro (1948) received the Jane Addams Children's Book Award in 1956.

Works

(Unless noted otherwise, Bontemps is the main author of the work)

God Sends Sunday, (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1931) Popo and Fifina, Children of Haiti, by Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes, (New York: Macmillan, 1932) You Can’t Pet a Possum, (New York: W. Handy: edited by Arna Bontemps, (New York: Macmillan, 1957) Golden Slippers: an Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers, compiled by Arna Bontemps, (New York: Harper & Row, 1941) The Fast Sooner Hound, by Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942) They Seek a City, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1945) We Have Tomorrow, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1945) Slappy Hooper, the Wonderful Sign Painter, by Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946) Story of the Negro, (New York: Knopf, 1948) The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949: an anthology, edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949) George Washington Carver, (Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, 1950) Chariot in the Sky: a Story of the Jubilee Singers, (Philadelphia: Winston, 1951) Sam Patch, the High, Wide & Dunlap, 1954) Lonesome Boy, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955) The Book of Negro Folklore, edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1958) Frederick Douglass: Slave, Fighter, Freeman, (New York: Knopf, 1959) 100 Years of Negro Freedom, (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1961) American Negro Poetry, edited and with an introduction by Arna Bontemps, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1963) Personals, (London: P. Breman, 1963) Famous Negro Athletes, (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1964) Great Slave Narratives, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969) Hold Fast to Dreams: Poems Old and New Selected by Arna Bontemps, (Chicago: Follett, 1969) Mr. Kelso’s Lion, (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970) Free at Last: the Life of Frederick Douglass, (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1971) The Harlem Renaissance Remembered: Essays, Edited, With a Memoir, (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972) Young Booker: Booker T. Washington’s Early Days, (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1972) The Old South: "A Summer Tragedy" and Other Stories of the Thirties, (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1973)