Native Son by Richard Wright - Lettered Edition

PRE-ORDER PRICE: $1,950
PUBLICATION PRICE: $2,150

Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Native Son tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a young Black man caught in a downward spiral after killing a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Written with the distinctive rhythm of a modern crime story, Native Son is both a condemnation of social injustice and an unsparing portrait of the Black experience in Depression-era America, revealing the tragic effect of poverty, racism and hopelessness on the human spirit.

First published in 1940, The New Yorker called Native Son by Richard Wright “the most powerful American novel to appear since The Grapes of Wrath.” Wright’s protest novel was an immediate best-seller, selling over a quarter million hardcover copies within just three weeks of its publication by the Book-of-the-Month Club. 

One of the earliest and most influential novels to confront America’s racial divide through the lived realities imposed upon Black Americans by a dominant white society, Native Son marked a decisive rupture in American literature. Its publication not only secured Richard Wright’s place as the most prominent Black writer of his generation, but also positioned him as a defining voice on African-American life and experience.

In the 1963 essay “Black Boys and Native Sons,” Irving Howe observed, “The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. It made impossible a repetition of the old lies … [and] brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear, and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture.” Newsweek referred to Wright’s story as “a novel of tremendous power and beauty” while American literary critic and professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has stated, “If one had to identify the single most influential shaping force in modern Black literary history, one would probably have to point to Wright and the publication of Native Son.”

In 1991, Native Son was published for the first time in its complete and unexpurgated form by the Library of America, restoring the novel as Richard Wright originally intended it to be read. Our edition is faithfully set from this definitive text, and includes the author’s essay, “How ‘Bigger’ Was Born,” further illuminating the novel’s genesis and evolution. Also included is an introduction by Arnold Rampersad, as well as a new and exclusive foreword by Julia Wright, the daughter of the author.  

Further solidifying its continued relevance, Native Son is number 27 on Radcliffe’s Rival 100 Best Novels List, the Modern Library placed it at number 20 on its list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century, Time magazine included the novel in its 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005, and it is included in The Atlantic‘s prestigious list of Great American Novels. 

With Native Son, author Richard Wright permanently altered the cultural landscape, rendering the nation’s longstanding evasions untenable and forcing into public view more starkly than ever before, the fear, violence and hatred that can find itself embedded within American society.

The limited edition of Native Son by Richard Wright is presented in two states: Lettered and Numbered editions.

LETTERED EDITION

• 6" x 9" trim size.
• 554 Pages.
• Limited to 26 copies.
• Signed by Julia Wright, Arnold Rampersad and Karen J. Revis.
• Complete and unexpurgated text restored as the author intended, originally published in the 1991 Library of America edition.  
• New exclusive foreword by Julia Wright.
• Introduction by Arnold Rampersad, from the 1991 Library of America edition. 
• Bonus essay "How 'Bigger' Was Born" by the author. 
• Eight linocuts by Karen J. Revis are printed from the blocks on Kitakata handmade paper and are tipped on. 
• Full goatskin binding.
• Cover features a foil-blocked portrait of Bigger Thomas rendered in three colors, adapted from one of the original linocuts commissioned for this edition.
• Endsheets are handmade by renowned paste paper artist Marie Kelzer.
  
• Designed by multi-award winning designer Jason Dewinetz, the text pages are set in Monotype Fournier with Alternate Gothic for display.
• Printed letterpress by Scott Vile at The Ascensius Press in Buxton, Maine on Mohawk Via Vellum paper. 
• Press work was accomplished on a Heidelberg cylinder press.
• Housed in a cloth covered clamshell enclosure with velour lined trays.
• Bookmark with all pre-orders.

Published editions may differ slightly from mockups and prototype designs.
Illustrations © 2025 by Karen J. Revis.