SOURCE: Bone, Robert. Down Home: A History of Afro-American Short Fiction from Its Beginnings to the End of the Harlem Renaissance, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975, 328 p.

In the following excerpt, Bone examines regional literature written by African American authors in the American South particularly the fiction of Joel Chandler Harris and Charles W. Chesnutt.

The Local-color School

When Chesnutt and Dunbar turned to story-writing in the 1880's and 1890's, they were not working in a cultural vacuum. The magazines in which they hoped to publish were most receptive to a type of fiction which stressed regional diversity. This emphasis on local color dominated the American short story from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the twentieth century. Associated with the rise of mass-circulation magazines like the Atlantic Monthly (founded in 1857), the Overland Monthly (founded in 1868), Scribner's Monthly (founded in 1870), and Century Magazine...