From Library Journal
This two-volume set brings together for the first time all of Hurston's best works: four novels, two books of folklore, and the first complete edition of her famous autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Hurston flowered under the warming sun of the Harlem Renaissance, the black arts' explosion centered in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. After years of neglect, she died a forgotten figure, but her reputation blossomed anew in the late 1970s. Hurston's permanent place in the canon of U.S. literature is now assured, for her second novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), is considered a classic and is taught in the college classroom. The estimable Library of America series draws together between the covers of one volume all four of her novels and a goodly selection of her short stories. That she was mother to the likes of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison is tangible. It's obvious they learned from Hurston's use of black folklore as the mat{‚}eriel of her fiction and admire her richly soaring language, which is derived from black dialect. Her novels and stories--the latter a form she didn't use as effectively--relate the loves and woes of black and white people from in and around the southern communities she knew so well; one novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), has a biblical setting, and it's still an enrapturing interpretation of a story told many times before. Libraries without a complete set of Hurston's fiction will find this volume a necessary and easy purchase to fill that unfortunate gap. Brad Hooper


Midwest Book Review
This volume brings all of Hurston's works together under one cover for the first time, providing a rich blend of her novels and stories and including important notes and a brief essay on her style and contributions. This definitive Hurston reader is all the college-level library should require if only one work on Hurston were to be chosen.


Book Description
When she died in obscurity in 1960, all her books were out of print. Now, Zora Neale Hurston is recognized as one of the most important and influential modern American writers. This volume, with its companion, "Zora Neale Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings," brings together for the first time all of Hurston's best works in one authoritative set. It features the acclaimed 1937 novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God," a lyrical masterpiece about a woman's struggle for love and independence. "Jonah's Gourd Vine," based on the story of Hurston's parents, details the rise and fall of a preacher torn between spirit and flesh. "Moses, Man of the Mountain" is a high-spirited retelling of the Exodus story in black vernacular. "Seraph on the Suwanee" portrays the passionate clash between a poor southern "cracker" and her willful husband. A selection of short stories further displays Hurston's unique fusion of folk traditions and literary modernism--comic, ironic, and soaringly poetic.


About the Author
Cheryl A. Wall, editor of this volume, is associate professor of English at Rutgers University. She is the editor of "Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women," and the author of "Women of Letters in the Harlem Renaissance."

ANNOTATION

A special feature of this collection of works by Zora Neale Hurston is the first complete and unexpurgated edition of her 1942 autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. Tell My Horse, Mules and Men, and selected articles are included also. Features a brief essay on the texts and detailed notes.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When she died in poverty and obscurity in 1960, all of Zora Neale Hurston's books were out of print. Today her groundbreaking works, suffused with the culture and traditions of African-Americans and the poetry of black speech, have won her recognition as one of the most significant African-American writers. This volume, with its companion, Novels & Stories brings together for the first time all of Hurston's best writings in one authoritative set. "Folklore is the arts of the people," Hurston wrote, "before they find out that there is any such thing as art." A pioneer of African-American ethnography who did graduate study in anthropology with the renowned Franz Boas, Hurston devoted herseif to preserving the black folk heritage. In Mules and Men (1935), the first book of African-American folklore written by an African-American, she returned to her native Florida and to New Orleans to record stories and sermons, blues and work songs, children's games, courtship rituals, and formulas of hoodoo doctors. This classic work is presented here with the original illustrations by the great Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias. Tell My Horse (1938), part ethnography, part travel book, vividly recounts the survival of African religion in Jamaican obeah and Haitian voodoo in the 1930s. Keenly alert to political and intellectual currents, Hurston went beyond superficial exoticism to explore the role of these religious systems in their societies. The text is illustrated by 26 photographs, many of them taken by Huston. Her extensive transcriptions of Creole songs here accompanied by new translation. A special feature of this volume is Hurston's controversial 1942 autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. With consultation by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is presented here for the first time as she intended, restoring passages omitted by the original publisher because of political controversy, sexual candor, or fear of libel. Included in an appendix are four additional chapters, one never

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

No Black History Month celebration would be complete without Hurston, and here the venerable Library of America collects a wide range of her work. This two-volume set combines four novels with a selection of short stories; her autobiography presented in unexpurgated form for the first time; and her lesser-known anthropological writings, all of which have been restored by scholar and editor Wall. The Hurston collection is essential for all libraries.

BookList - Brad Hooper