As Ellison's literary executor, John F. Callahan, notes in his introductory essay, the stories in this volume date from the period between 1937 and 1954, and most were written before Ellison published his novel Invisible Man (1952; see separate entry). Callahan believes that Ellison was developing the themes and experimenting with the techniques he would use in that novel. In describing his selection process, Callahan also remarks that he excluded stories which were part of Ellison's abandoned novel Slick or of the long-awaited but still unpublished novel in progress.