Whether Hurston ever intended to return to the manuscript is an open question, but the fact is, she never did. The work was unfinished, she had explained, and “the author wished to hold the manuscript back for extensive revision.” The editor told Locke he “was quite interested in the manuscript,” but that he could not publish it against its author’s wishes. He’d been planning to drop in on the managing editor at Viking as part of an effort to fast-track a book deal for a manuscript he’d sent over in advance, and without the permission of its author - Zora Neale Hurston.īut when Locke called from the station to confirm the meeting, he discovered he’d been “short-circuited.” Hurston’s literary agent had beaten him to Viking, where she had yanked the manuscript off the editor’s desk. Locke, then a philosophy professor at Howard University, was passing through New York on his way to Europe for the summer. ON JUNE 11, 1931, Alain Locke received a parcel in Penn Station.
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