Charles W. Chesnutt: Essays and SpeechesOver the past decade, increasing attention has been paid to the life and work of Charles W. Chesnutt (1858 1932), considered by many the major African American fiction writer before the Harlem Renaissance by virtue of the three novels and two collections of short stories he published between 1899 and 1905. Less familiar are the essays he wrote for American periodicals from 1899 through 1931, the majority of which are analyses of and protests against