The Collected Works of Langston Hughes

A century after his birth in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes is, in a sense, coming home. The University of Missouri Press is proud to have completed the publication of The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, a compilation of the novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, and other published work by one of the twentieth century's most prolific and influential African American authors. The series makes available Hughes's most famous works as well as lesser-known and out-of-print selections, providing readers and libraries with a comprehensive source for the first time.

Hughes moved to Harlem in the 1920s and ultimately became the most prominent figure in the literary, artistic, and intellectual phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote poems for The Crisis and in 1926 published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues. Over the decades until his death in 1967, he became one of the best-known and most versatile American writers of the twentieth century. His creative range—poetry, novels, short fiction, drama, translations, gospel-song plays, libretti, juvenile fiction, radio and television scripts, history, and autobiography—is rare in American letters.

The volumes of the Collected Works have been published with the same goal that Hughes pursued throughout his lifetime: making his books available to the people. Each volume includes a chronology by Arnold Rampersad as well as an introduction by the volume's editor.

Volumes in the Collected Works:

2. The Poems: 1941-1950
Edited by Arnold Rampersad

3. The Poems: 1951-1967
Edited by Arnold Rampersad

4. The Novels: Not without Laughter and Tambourines to Glory
Edited by Dolan Hubbard

5. The Plays to 1942: Mulatto to The Sun Do Move
Edited by Leslie Catherine Sanders, with Nancy Johnston

6. Gospel Plays, Operas, and Later Dramatic Works
Edited by Leslie Catherine Sanders

7. The Early Simple Stories
Edited by Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper

8. The Later Simple Stories
Edited by Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper

9. Essays on Art, Race, Politics, and World Affairs
Edited by Christopher C. De Santis

10. Fight for Freedom and Other Writings on Civil Rights
Edited by Christopher C. De Santis

11. Works for Children and Young Adults: Poetry, Fiction and Other Writing
Edited by Dianne Johnson

12. Works for Children and Young Adults: Biographies
Edited by Steven C. Tracy

13. Autobiography: The Big Sea
Edited by Joseph McLaren

14. Autobiography: I Wonder As I Wander
Edited by Joseph McLaren

15. The Short Stories
Edited by R. Baxter Miller

16. The Translations: Federico García Lorca, Nicolás Guillén, and Jacques Roumain
Edited by Dellita Martin-Ogunsola

Forthcoming: An Annotated Bibliography of the Works of Langston Hughes

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