The literary reputation of Jean Toomer is based primarily on Cane (1923), a collection of poems, impressionistic prose sketches, and stories on Afro-American topics. He published a few other poems, stories, and dramas, as well as some essays and book reviews, in various periodicals, but none of them equaled his achievement in Cane. Though an influence on black writers of the Harlem Renaissance, he did not identify himself closely with them, preferring instead to think of himself as a new kind of man, a blending of races, an American. He was, as he said, of the human race.

A strong influence on Toomer was his grandfather P.B.S. Pinchback, an important Louisiana politician of the Reconstruction Era. Toomer spent much of his childhood in the home of his grandfather, who was living in Washington, D.C., by the time Toomer was born. Pinchback dominated his family, including his...