Journal Entry for Clearing Through The Thicket
Chesnutt, Charles Waddell, et al. An Exemplary Citizen: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1906-1932. Stanford University Press, 2002. (17)
Doubleday (publisher) – Wikipedia
is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897. By 1947, it was the largest book publisher in the United States. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed them through its own stores.
Here I am continuing with my historical survey of Page’s relationship with Chestnutt. A lot of what I’m putting together is influenced by this passage from the above An Exemplary Citizen:
“A less positive assessment of their relationship at the turn of the century was recalled with dismay but Willian Stanley Braithwaite in 1942: Chestnutt, Braithwaite related, was to referred to literary and publishing as “Page’s darky”. (xxii)
While I can’t say for sure, I want to convey the way in which Page still seems to be looking out for Chestnutt while potentially harboring a crypto-paternalistic attitude. As a gatekeeper, he definitely helped facilitates Chestnutt’s publication, but one cannot know whether there were hidden intentions. My posts as Page walk the speculative line between caring and using.