Nearly a century after his birth in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes is, in a sense, coming home. The University of Missouri Press is proud to announce the publication of The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, a compilation of the novels, short stories, poems, plays, and essays by one of the twentieth century's most prolific and influential African American authors. The seventeen-volume series will make available Hughes's most famous works as well as less well known and out-of-print selections, providing readers and libraries with a comprehensive source for the first time. Hughes moved to Harlem in the 1920s and ultimately became the most prominent figure in the literary, artistic, and intellectual phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes wrote articles for The Crisis and in 1926 published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues. Over the decades until his death in 1967, he became one of the best-known and most versatile American writers of the twentieth century. His creative range -- poetry, novels, short fiction, drama, translations, gospel-song plays, libretti, juvenile fiction, radio and television scripts, history, biography, and autobiography -- is unique in American letters. The seventeen volumes of the Collected Works are to be published with the goal that Hughes pursued throughout his lifetime: making his books available to the people. Each volume will include a biographical and literary chronology by Arnold Rampersad, as well as an introduction by a Hughes scholar. The volume introductions will provide contextual and historical information on the particular work. For the first time in many years, Langston Hughes's published collections of stories are nowavailable in a single volume. Ways of White Folks, originally published in 1934; Laughing to Keep from Crying, originally published in 1952; and additional stories from Something in Common and Other Stories, originally published in 1963; as well as previously uncollected stories will be included in this work. Within these stories, all carefully crafted in the language Hughes loved, are many themes for which he is best known. We meet and come to know many characters -- black and white, young and old, men and women -- all as believable as our own families, friends, and acquaintances. Hughes's stories are not limited by racial stereotypes. Instead, they portray people as they actually are: a mixture of good, bad, and much in-between. In these short stories, as in the Simple stories, the reader enjoys Hughes's humor and irony. The stories show us his inclination to mock himself and his beloved people, as much as he ridicules the flaws of those who belittle his race. By maintaining the form and format of the original story collections, this volume presents Hughes's stories as he wanted them to be read. His genuine characters interact and realistically bring to life this era of America's past. This volume will be an invaluable addition to the library of anyone interested in African American literature generally and the fiction of Langston Hughes specifically.

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