About The Weary Blues; Not Without Laughter; The Ways of White Folks

A major hardcover compendium of poetry and fiction by the legendary Black American poet of the Harlem Renaissance

One of the most important writers to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes may be best known as a poet, but he was also a brilliant storyteller, blending elements of blues and jazz, speech and song, into a triumphant and wholly original idiom. Perhaps more than any other writer, Langston Hughes made the white America of the 1920s and 1930s aware of the Black culture thriving in its midst. Hughes’s poetry and fiction works are messages from that America, sharply etched vignettes of its daily life, cruelly accurate portrayals of Black and white collisions. 

This Everyman’s Library compendium comprises Hughes’s debut poetry collection, The Weary Blues, which catapulted him into literary stardom at just twenty-four years old; his award-winning debut novel, Not Without Laughter, published in 1930 to critical raves; and his 1933 collection of short stories The Ways of White Folks, currently only available in Vintage Classics trade paperback. 

Everyman’s Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.