by Ann Petry
1957
In December, speaks on “The Problems of Writing Fiction and Biography” at a Columbia University event honoring her former teacher Mabel Louise Robinson.
1958
Spends two months in Hollywood in the fall working as a screenwriter for Columbia Pictures, adapting Charles Williams’s 1951 novel Hill Girl as “That Hill Girl,” to star Kim Novak. The Chicago Defender notes: “It’s the first time a Negro writer has been employed . . . to do a screen adaptation.” The film is never produced. Story “Has Anybody Seen Miss Dora Dean?” appears in the October–November issue of The New Yorker.
1959
Chairs an Old Saybrook town committee tasked with appointing representatives to oversee construction of a new elementary school. Harold Robbins makes a second attempt to find financing for his screenplay of The Street, but the film is never made.
1960
Recounts her experiences in Hollywood for the Old Saybrook Women’s Club. Harriet Tubman is published by Methuen in London under the title The Girl Called Moses.
1961
Attends celebration of detective writer Rex Stout’s 75th birthday at Sardi’s in New York.
1962
Spends part of the winter in Puerto Rico, taking an unaccustomed vacation trip. “I never felt that at home anywhere I have been,” she writes in her journal; “the curves in the roads, the mountains, the rain forest—the beat of that Spanish music—the brilliance of the sun—the color of the flowers.”
1963
On February 12, Lincoln’s birthday, attends White House reception celebrating the first century of emancipation. Novella “Miss Muriel,” described as part of “a larger work now in progress,” appears in anthology Soon, One Morning: New Writing by American Negroes, 1940–1962, edited by Herbert Hill.
1964
Criticizes plans for the construction of a new high school in Old Saybrook at a March town meeting, calling them “inefficient and wildly extravagant.” Tituba of Salem Village, a young adult historical novel, is published by Thomas Y. Crowell on September 4. In November, speaks on children’s literature at the New York Public Library; titled “The Common Ground,” her lecture is published in The Horn Book Magazine the following April.
1965
Along with writers Russell Baker and Nathaniel Benchley, speaks at Baltimore Book and Author Luncheon in April. Story “The New Mirror” appears in The New Yorker on May 29. Reviews historical novel I, Juan de Pareja by Elizabeth Borton de Trevino in The New York Times Book Review.
1966
Purchases a television set, the family’s first. Reviews novels Canalboat to Freedom by Thomas Fall and David in Silence by Veronica Robinson in The New York Times Book Review. Daughter Elisabeth graduates from Old Saybrook High School as valedictorian and enrolls at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
1967
Story “The Migraine Workers” appears in the May issue of Redbook. Over the summer, speaks at a symposium on children’s literature at the University of California at Berkeley. After aunt Anna Louise James breaks an ankle, helps run and eventually close the James Pharmacy.
1968
Testifies before Old Saybrook Planning Commission to protest proposed alterations to the town’s cemeteries. Donates papers to the Mugar Library at Boston University.
1969
Speaks at a conference of English teachers at Hartford Public High School.
1970
In January, gives presentation to Old Saybrook Historical Society on witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England. Publishes Legends of the Saints on August 27. Illustrated by Anne Rockwell, it retells the legends of ten saints, some well-known and some obscure: Christopher, Genesius, George, Blaise, Catherine of Alexandria, Nicholas, Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc, Thomas More, and Martin de Porres. Writes biographical article on Harriet Tubman for the Encyclopedia Britannica.
1971
Story “The Witness” appears in the February issue of Redbook. On May 17, Houghton Mifflin publishes Miss Muriel and Other Stories; it gathers thirteen stories, twelve originally printed in magazines from 1945 to 1971 and one, “Mother Africa,” appearing for the first time.
1972
Travels to Oxford, Ohio, over the summer as a guest of the creative writing program of Miami University. Is elected secretary of the Cypress Cemetery Association in Old Saybrook.
1973
Presents lecture “This Unforgettable Passage,” on her life and works, at Suffolk University in Boston; it inaugurates new African American literature program there. Also speaks to public school library volunteers at a conference in Fairfield, Connecticut, and to the Women’s Club in Essex, Connecticut, on “How Not to Write a Book.”
1974
Appointed visiting professor of English at the University of Hawaii for the 1974–75 academic year. In August, daughter enrolls in law school at University of Pennsylvania.
1975
Reads her story “The Migraine Workers” at a University of Hawaii event in March, and in April gives a public lecture on the art of writing; is interviewed by The Honolulu Advertiser and appears on local television.
1976
Publishes her first poems—“Noo York City 1,” “Noo York City 2,” and “Noo York City 3”—in the journal Weid: The Sensibility Review.
1977
Challenges Congressman Christopher Dodd, at an April public meeting in Old Saybrook, “to simplify the forms and instructions so that any literate person could fill out his own taxes”; declares she will rewrite the instructions for IRS form 1040 herself. Aunt Anna Louise James dies on December 12; takes responsibility for cleaning out and selling the James Pharmacy building.
1978
Receives Literature Fellowship from National Endowment for the Arts.
1979
In March, reads her story “The Witness” during “Women in the Arts Week” at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Attends a “Meet the Authors” event at the Waterford (Connecticut) Public Library.
1980
Harold Robbins, who attempted unsuccessfully to produce a movie adaptation of The Street in the 1950s, seeks investors to take the novel to Broadway as a musical, again without success.
1981
An adaptation of her story “Solo on the Drums” airs on PBS television in March, as an episode in the series With Ossie and Ruby; Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee read from the text while Billy Taylor accompanies on piano and Max Roach on drums. Publishes poems “A Purely Black Stone” and “A Real Boss Black Cat” in The View from the Top of the Mountain: Poems after Sixty. Sister Helen Bush is diagnosed with bone marrow cancer.
1982
Delivers fourth annual Richard Wright Lecture at Yale, “The Making of a Writer.” Reads from her work at The New School in New York City and Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
1983
Receives honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Suffolk University. Talks with students in the class “Black Women and Their Fictions” at Yale, at the invitation of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
1984
Visits the College of Pharmacy at the University of Illinois–Chicago, where students perform a play taken from a section of her novel Country Place. Speaks at a symposium on “Black Women’s Literary Traditions” organized by the writing program at MIT, along with historian Dorothy Sterling and novelist Dorothy West.
1985
Gives lecture at University of Massachusetts symposium “Writers Speak III: New England as Region and Idea”; meets James Baldwin, who is teaching at Amherst.
1986
Reads new story, “The Moses Project,” at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts; it is published in Harbor Review. The Street appears in a new edition from Beacon Press.
1987
In January, reads her work at the Afro-Ame
rican Historical and Cultural Museum in Philadelphia.
1988
Sister Helen Bush dies in Old Saybrook on May 16. A week later, receives honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Connecticut. Publishes an appreciation of Langston Hughes’s and Roy DeCarava’s The Sweet Flypaper of Life in Rediscoveries II, edited by David Madden and Peggy Bach. The Narrows and The Drugstore Cat appear in new editions from Beacon Press. In October, lectures and reads from her work at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
1989
Is presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by Philadelphia mayor Wilson Goode during a Celebration of Black Writers in February. Later that month, joins sculptor Selma Burke and artist Margaret Burroughs to discuss “Coming of Age in Post-Depression America” at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. Attends commencement at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she is given an honorary doctorate.
1990
With playwright Alice Childress and poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, reads from her works at Hartford College for Women conference “Prophets for a New Day.”
1991
HarperCollins publishes a new edition of Tituba of Salem Village.
1992
Houghton Mifflin reissues The Street in February, prompting wide, career-retrospective review coverage. In May, gives keynote speech for twenty-fifth anniversary of Old Saybrook Library. Receives Connecticut Arts Award from the Connecticut Commission of the Arts in October. The following month, attends day of programming devoted to her work at Trinity College in Hartford; organized by Farah Jasmine Griffin, the event includes a scholarly symposium, an evening tribute by novelist Gloria Naylor, and a dinner in her honor. Reads from her works on Connecticut Public Radio as part of the “Connecticut Voices” series. Contributes story “My First Real Hat” to When I Was a Child, published by the Children’s Literature Association.
1993
Receives honorary degree from Trinity College. Donates autographed copies of all her works to the Ann Petry Collection at the African American Research Center at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina.
1994
The James Pharmacy is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
1995–1997
Donates aunt Anna Louise James’s papers to Radcliffe College in 1995. On February 7, falls down the stairs and breaks her hip. Following surgery is transferred to a nursing home to undergo rehabilitation. Dies on April 28, and is buried in Old Saybrook’s Cypress Cemetery. Husband is interred beside her after his death on December 7, 2000.
Note on the Texts
This volume contains Ann Petry’s novels The Street (1946) and The Narrows (1953), along with three related short essays, “The Great Secret,” “Harlem,” and “The Novel as Social Criticism.” The texts of the novels, both first published by Houghton Mifflin, have been taken from their first printings, and the text of the essays from their original magazine and anthology appearances, as described below.
The Street. By her own account, Petry’s decision to begin The Street was prompted by an editor at Houghton Mifflin, who wrote to ask, after reading her story “On Saturday the Siren Sounds at Noon” in the December 1943 issue of The Crisis, if she was at work on a novel. Encouraged to apply for the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, Petry drafted five chapters and an outline during the fall of 1944, submitting them to the Fellowship competition at the end of the year. In February 1945 she was notified she had won the $2,400 award, and by June she was able to tell a reporter from the New York Age that she was “near completion.”
Houghton Mifflin published The Street on February 7, 1946, in an edition that quickly went through multiple printings. The novel has been described as the first book by an African American woman to sell over a million copies: it was reissued in February 1947 by the World Publishing Company in Cleveland, in an edition prepared from the original Houghton Mifflin printing plates; in April 1947 by Michael Joseph in London, newly typeset for British readers; in 1949 by Signet/New American Library in New York, as a newly typeset paperback; and in numerous editions since. Petry is not known to have corrected or revised her novel after its initial appearance in print, and she declined invitations in subsequent decades to add new introductory material, believing her work was complete. The text of The Street in the present volume is that of the February 1946 Houghton Mifflin first printing.
The Narrows. Petry started writing The Narrows soon after the publication of her second novel, Country Place, in September 1947, and worked on it almost exclusively for about five years; it was published by Houghton Mifflin on July 30, 1953. As in the case of The Street, she is not known to have sought corrections or revisions after the novel’s initial printing, though it was subsequently reissued by Victor Gollancz in London (1954), Signet/New American Library in New York (1955), and other publishers thereafter during her lifetime. The text of the novel in the present volume is taken from the July 1953 Houghton Mifflin first printing.
Other Writings. The texts of the three essays that follow The Street and The Narrows in this collection have been taken from their first appearances in print: “The Great Secret” from the July 1948 issue of The Writer; “Harlem” from the April 1949 issue of Holiday (where it was illustrated with photographs by George Leavens); and “The Novel as Social Criticism” from The Writer’s Book, an anthology edited by Helen R. Hull and published by Harper in New York in 1950. It is believed all three essays are reprinted here for the first time.
This volume presents the texts of the original printings chosen for inclusion here, but it does not attempt to reproduce features of their design and layout. The texts are presented without change, except for the correction of typographical errors. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are often expressive features and they are not altered, even when inconsistent or irregular. The following is a list of typographical errors corrected, cited by page and line number of the hardcover edition: 35.23, it’s; 76.15, moving The; 94.20, Jones’s; 140.34, policemen; 174.6, you when; 187.2, Run; 191.10, Hey,; 196.33, stop She; 205.35, him It; 226.29, you all.; 236.30, further He; 265.13, super’s; 266.2, drew; 337.34, imperturably; 349.24, hod; 362.33, heat” in; 363.38, blubs; 364.19, gorilla; 404.15, herself.; 408.7–8, suprised; 408.26, said.; 417.14, morning’,; 419.3, front’; 422.24, said.; 423.40, afternon,; 434.33, bar keep; 439.7, coffe; 442.13, Same Train; 442.20, gaity; 442.28, Camillo; 456.18, mantle.; 475.15, that it; 475.27, devilsh; 477.25–26, happend; 482.4, aways; 486.15, pepperment; 488.30–31, expressived-eyed; 496.11, dyamo; 505.6, goddam; 519.6, to.”; 519.23 (and passim), captain,; 528.21, Adams,; 529.14, coming, and; 538.7, staring her,; 540.7, afternon; 541.9, voice.; 548.8, Crunches,; 561.36 (and passim), gentleman’s; 561.37, thougth; 563.15, now,; 579.10, free-from; 589.20, quickly,; 594.11, Se he; 597.10, had chance; 605.34, Waldorf-astoria; 615.2, J.C.,; 633.35, and arm; 641.25, heather; 644.11, Mr. B.; 646.16, Knees,; 649.27, flare; 702.13, Negrovillianconvicthero; 710.16, bout; 721.1, every; 725.18, tabliod; 756.28, now—; 764.30, sty e; 765.25, The Novel; 776.33, any.
Notes
In the notes below, the reference numbers denote page and line of this volume of the hardcover edition (the line count includes chapter headings but not blank lines). Quotations from Shakespeare are keyed to The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). Biblical references are keyed to the King James Version. For further information about Petry’s life and works, and references to other studies, see Keith Clark, The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013); Hazel Arnett Ervin, Ann Petry: A Bio-Bibliography (New York: G. K. Hall, 1993); Hazel Arnett Ervin, The Critical Response to Ann Petry (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2005); Hazel Arnett Ervin and Hilary Holladay, eds., Ann Petry’s Short Fiction: Critical Essays (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2004); Farah Jasmine Griffin, Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World W
ar II (New York: Basic Civitas, 2013); Hilary Holladay, Ann Petry (New York: Twayne, 1996); Alex Lubin, ed., Revising the Blueprint: Ann Petry and the Literary Left (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007); and Elisabeth Petry, At Home Inside: A Daughter’s Tribute to Ann Petry (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009).
THE STREET
46.3 Ben Franklin and his loaf of bread.] See Franklin’s Autobiography, first published in English in 1793.
103.29 “Swing It, Sister.”] Song performed by The Mills Brothers in the 1934 film Strictly Dynamite, with lyrics by Harold Adamson (1906–1980) and music by Burton Lane (1912–1997).
104.28–30 “Darlin’ . . . no fun, Darlin’.”] Ballad by Lucius Venable “Lucky” Millinder (1910–1966) and Petry’s friend Frances Kraft Reckling (1906–1987), first recorded in May 1944. Continuing the song after it has finished playing, Lutie extemporizes new lyrics.
113.18–19 Night and Day. . . . Let’s Go Home.”] “Night and Day” was written by Cole Porter (1891–1964) for the 1932 musical Gay Divorce and subsequently performed by many artists. “Hurry Up, Sammy, and Let’s Go Home,” written by Dan Burley (1907–1962) and Frances Kraft Reckling (1906–1987), was registered for copyright in 1943 but is not known to have been recorded. For “Darlin’,” see note 104.28–30.
175.30 Sugar Hill] See Petry’s description of this section of Harlem on page 767 of the present volume.
218.13 Rock, Raleigh, Rock.] This musical title is obscure and may be Petry’s invention.
THE NARROWS
308.2 Mabel Louise Robinson] Robinson (1874–1962), an author of fiction for children and young adults, taught creative writing at Columbia University. Petry was her student for two years beginning in 1943.