Posts in this series were written by undergraduate students in the spring 2020 Museums & Society class Scribbling Women: Gender, Writing, and the Archive. We used rare books, archival materials, and digital primary sources in the Sheridan Libraries’ collections to prompt and guide inquiries into the creation, reception, preservation, and legacy of texts from the 1820s through the 1930s by North American women who brought attention to race-, gender-, and class-based inequities. Through their short essays, bibliographies, and analyses of digital sources, students are providing to a broad audience accurate information about and appreciation for the “scribbling women” they studied. For more about our series title, please see the first post. For more about our public-facing work, please see our gallery of final projects and blog.
Today’s post is a bibliography compiled by Julia Costacurta, Class of 2020, a Biomedical Engineering major. The creation of accurate online bibliographies was a key component of our class effort to make the works of these women writers better known and easier to read.
Portrait of Zora Neale Hurston, Eatonville, Florida, ca. 1940. Photographer unknown. State Library and Archives of Florida.
Zora Neale Hurston is regarded today as one of the most significant American writers of the twentieth century. Her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, first published in 1937, is widely read and taught, and was recently named to the BBC’s list of “100 Novels That Shaped Our World.” However, Hurston did not gain financial success from her writings during her lifetime, and her fame faded in the 1950s. She died impoverished in 1960, and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama on January 7, 1891, and moved to Eatonville, Florida three years later; Eatonville features prominently in many of Hurston’s stories. Her mother died when she was only thirteen, and her father quickly remarried. His new wife was a woman whom Hurston despised. She left home at fourteen and lived an itinerant life for over ten years, working menial jobs and struggling to finish her education. When Hurston was twenty-six, she moved to Baltimore and claimed to be sixteen in order to qualify for free public schooling. She graduated from Morgan College, the high school of Morgan State University, in 1918, and continued to present herself as ten years younger than her actual age from that point onward.
Over the next ten years, Hurston earned an associate’s degree from Howard University and a BA in anthropology from Barnard, where she was the only Black student. While in New York, she befriended other Black writers such as Langston Hughes, Dorothy West, and Countee Cullen. She quickly became a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance, publishing writings in books and magazines such as The New Negro, Fire!!, and Opportunity. Her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, was published in 1934.
In addition to fiction, Hurston also published a range of non-fiction articles and anthropological studies. In 1936, she received a Guggenheim fellowship, which she used to travel to Jamaica and Haiti. There, she collected stories and material on African rituals and voodoo which were eventually published in Mules and Men and Tell My Horse, two nonfiction collections. While in Haiti, Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, which is considered to be her masterwork. She published her two other novels, Moses, Man of the Mountain and Seraph on the Suwanee, as well as her controversial autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road, in the years following, while working as a freelance writer and journalist.
Although much of Hurston’s writing was received with acclaim, she was often underpaid. By age sixty, she required public assistance to make ends meet, and was forced to enter St. Lucie County Welfare Home as a result of her financial and medical difficulties. She died of heart disease on January 28, 1960, too poor to afford a headstone for her grave.
Hurston’s resurgence in popularity, beginning in the 1970s, can be chiefly attributed to fellow Black female author and Hurston scholar Alice Walker, and the creation of African American Studies programs at American universities. Walker tracked down Hurston’s remains in 1973, and installed a grave marker at the site with the inscription “A Genius of the South.” In 1975, she published an article in Ms. magazine titled “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” which revived interest in her works, and in 2003 gave the Virginia Gildersleeve lecture at Barnard summarizing her stewardship of Hurston’s legacy.
Since this scholarly and popular renaissance, Hurston has been the recipient of many posthumous honors. Over the past thirty years, she has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, the New York Writers Hall of Fame, and the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. There have been entire conferences devoted to scholarship surrounding her works, and awards and fellowships given in her name. While Hurston didn’t receive the praise and profits she deserved during her lifetime, she undeniably left her mark on American literature.
Bibliography of Fiction by Zora Neale Hurston
This bibliography focuses on Hurston’s short stories, novels, and plays—omitting her nonfiction books, autobiography, news articles, musical compositions, and folk tales. A listing of these other writings can be found at the UCF Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive.
My goal has been to provide, for each of the first editions listed, publication information as well as a link to an authoritative digital surrogate or e-text of the original publication, where copyright allows, or a catalog record. For many of the more obscure and unpublished works, I was unable to find an original publication; I have chosen in those cases to cite either archival holdings of manuscripts, or more modern printings of the works. If I was unable to find a digital surrogate of a given story, I relied on the recently published compilation Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick and the 1995 Complete Stories for publication information. Works are listed chronologically by publication date, or, in some cases, date of composition.
FIRST EDITIONS
Short Stories
Hurston, Zora Neale. “John Redding Goes to Sea.” Stylus, May 1921. Text Link
—–. “A Bit of Our Harlem.” Negro World, 8 April 1922. Text Link
—–. “Drenched in Light.” Opportunity, December 1924, 371-74. Text Link
—–. “Magnolia Flower.” The Spokesman, July 1925. Catalog Link
—–. “Muttsy.” Opportunity, June 1925. Text Link
—–. “Spunk.” Opportunity, August 1926. Catalog Link
—–. “’Possum or Pig?” The Forum, September 1926.
—–. “The Eatonville Anthology.” The Messenger, September-November 1926. Catalog Link
—–. “Sweat.” Fire, November 1926. Catalog Link
—–. “Under the Bridge.” The X-Ray, December 1926.
—–. “The Book of Harlem.” The Pittsburgh Courier, 12 February 1927. Catalog Link
—–. “The Back Room.” The Pittsburgh Courier, 19 February 1927.
—–. “Monkey Junk.” The Pittsburgh Courier, 5 March 1927. Text Link
—–. “The Country in the Woman.” The Pittsburgh Courier, 26 March 1927. Text Link
—–. “The Gilded Six-Bits.” Story, August 1933. Text Link
—–. “She Rock.” The Pittsburgh Courier, 5 August 1933.
—–. “Mother Catherine.” Negro: An Anthology. Edited by Nancy Cunard. Wishart & Co., 1934. 54-57. Text Link
—–. “Uncle Monday.” Negro: An Anthology. Edited by Nancy Cunard. Wishart & Co., 1934. 57-61. Text Link
—–. “The Fire and the Cloud.” Challenge, September 1934. Text Link
—–. “Cock Robin Beale Street.” Southern Literary Messenger, July 1941. 321-323.
—–. “Story in Harlem Slang.” American Mercury, July 1942. Text Link
—–. “High John De Conquer.” American Mercury, 1943-1944. 450-458. Text Link
—–. “Hurricane.” Taken at the Flood: The Human Drama as Seen by Modern American Novelists. Edited by Ann E. Watkins. Harper & Brothers, 1946. Originally in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
—–. “The Conscience of the Court.” Saturday Evening Post, 18 May 1950. 22, 112-122. Text Link
—–. “Escape from Pharaoh.” Ways of God and Men: Great Stories from the Bible in World Literature. Edited by Ruth Selden. Stephen Daye Press, 1950. Originally in Moses, Man of the Mountain.
—–. “The Tablets of the Law.” The Word Lives on: A Treasury of Spiritual Fiction. Edited by Frances Brentano, Doubleday, 1951. Originally in Moses, Man of the Mountain.
Hurston, Zora Neale and Langston Hughes. “The Bone of Contention.” Mule Bone: a Comedy of Negro Life. HarperPerennial, 1991.
Hurston, Zora Neale. “Black Death.” The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston. Edited by Vivian Bowden et al. HarperCollins, 1995.
—–. “Harlem Slanguage.” The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston. Edited by Vivian Bowden et al. HarperCollins, 1995. Text Link
—–. “Now You Cookin’ with Gas.” The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston. Edited by Vivian Bowden et al. HarperCollins, 1995.
—–. “The Seventh Veil.” The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston. Edited by Vivian Bowden et al. HarperCollins, 1995.
—–. “The Woman in Gaul.” The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston. Edited by Vivian Bowden et al. HarperCollins, 1995.
—–. “The Conversion of Sam.” Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick. Edited by Genevieve West. New York: HarperCollins, 2020.
Novels
Hurston, Zora Neale. Jonah’s Gourd Vine. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1934. Text Link
—–. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1937. Text Link
—–. Moses, Man of the Mountain. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1939. Text Link
—–. Seraph on the Sewanee. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1948. Text Link
Plays
Hurston, Zora Neale. “Meet the Mamma (1925).” Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays. Edited by Jean Lee Cole and Charles Mitchell. Rutgers University Press, 2008. Text Link
—–. “Color Struck, A Play.” Fire, November 1926. 7-14.
—–. “Spears (1926).” Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays. Edited by Jean Lee Cole and Charles Mitchell. Rutgers University Press, 2008.
—–. “The First One (1927).” Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays. Edited by Jean Lee Cole and Charles Mitchell. Rutgers University Press, 2008.
—–. Cold Keener, A Revue. Typescript, 1930. Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress. Text Link
Hurston, Zora Neale, and Langston Hughes. De Turkey and De Law. Typescript, 1930. Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress. Text Link
Hurston, Zora Neale, and Rowena W. Jeliffe. “The Sermon in the Valley (1931).” Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays. Edited by Jean Lee Cole and Charles Mitchell. Rutgers University Press, 2008.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Forty Yards. Typescript, 1931. Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress. Text Link
—–. Lawing and Jawing. Typescript, 1931. Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress. Text Link
—–. Poker! Typescript, 1931. Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress. Text Link
—–. Woofing. Typescript, 1931. Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress. Text Link
—–. The Fiery Chariot. Typescript, 1932. Zora Neale Hurston Papers, University of Florida.
—–. Spunk. Typescript, 1935. Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress. Text Link
Hurston, Zora Neale. and Dorothy Waring. Polk County. Typescript, 1944. Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress. Text Link
LATER AND MODERN EDITIONS
Selected Modern Reprints of the Hurston Revival
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel. New York: Negro Universities Press [1969].
—–. Jonah’s Gourd Vine. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1971.
—–. Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel. University of Illinois Press, 1978.
—–. Jonah’s Gourd Vine. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Foreword by Rita Dove. HarperPerennial, 1990.
—–. Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Foreword by Mary Helen Washington. Harper & Row, 1990.
—–. Moses, Man of the Mountain. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Foreword by Deborah E. McDowell. HarperCollins, 1991. Print.
—–. Seraph on the Suwanee: A Novel. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Foreword by Hazel V. Carby. HarperPerennial, 1991.
Collections
Hurston, Zora Neale. Spunk: The Selected Stories of Zora Neale Hurston. London: Camden Press, 1987.
—–. Novels and Stories. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1995.
—–. Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings: Mules and Men, Tell My Horse, Dust Tracks on a Road, Selected Articles. New York: Library of America, 1995.
—–. Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays. Edited by Jean L. Cole and Charles Mitchell. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008.
—–. The Complete Stories. Edited by Vivian Bowden et al. Introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Sieglinde Lemke. New York: HarperPerennial, 2008.
—–. I Love Myself When I Am Laughing … and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader. Edited by Alice Walker and Mary H. Washington. New York: Feminist Press, 2020.
—–. Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick. Edited by Genevieve West. New York: HarperCollins, 2020.
Their Eyes Were Watching God In Translation
Chinese: Ta Men Yan Wang Shang Cang. Translated by Jiaxiang Wang. Beijing: Beijing shi yue wen yi chu ban she, 2000.
Czech: Ich Oci Vyzeraly Boha: Roman. Translated by Maria Rafajová. Zivena: V.T. Sv. Martine, 1947.
Dutch: En Ze Keken Naar God. Translated by Lieke Frese. Breda: De Geus, 1999.
French: Mais leurs yeux dardaient sur Dieu: un roman Américain. Translated by Sika Fakambi. Paris: Zulma, [2018]
German: Und Ihre Augen Schauten Gott: Roman. Translated by Barbara Henninges. Zürich: Ammann, 1993.
Haitian Creole: Tout Je Te Sou Bondye. Translated by Zermatt Scutt. Edisyon 2 Kreyòl Yo, 2018.
Italian: I Loro Occhi Guardavano Dio. Translated by Adriana Bottini. Napoli: Cargo, 2009.
Japanese: Karera No Me Wa Kami O Miteita. Translated by Noboru Matsumoto. Tokyo: Shinjukushob?, 1995.
Korean: Kudul Ui Nun Un Sin Ul Pogo Issotta. Translated by Mi-son Yi. Soul T’ukpyolsi: Munye Ch’ulp’ansa, 2014.
Portuguese: O Seu Olhar Posto Em Deus. Translated By Elvira Souto. Santiago de Compostela: Laiovento, 1993.
Spanish: Sus Ojos Miraban a Dios. Translated by Andrés Ibáñez. Barcelona: Lumen, 1995.
Turkish: Tanriya Bakiyorlardi. Translated by Ayse S. O. Yener. Ankara: Phoenix Yayinevi, 2003.
Anthologies
Hughes, Langston. The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers: An Anthology from 1899 to the Present. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967.
Hoffman, Nancy, Florence Howe, and Elaine Hedges. Women Working: An Anthology of Stories and Poems. Old Westbury NY: Feminist Press, 1979.
Gates, Henry L. Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology. New York: Meridian Book, 1990.
Hamalian, Leo, and James V. Hatch. The Roots of African American Drama: An Anthology of Early Plays, 1858-1938. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991.
Knopf-Newman, Marcy J. The Sleeper Wakes: Harlem Renaissance Stories by Women. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993.
Major, Clarence. Calling the Wind: Twentieth Century African-American Short Stories. HarperPerennial, 1993.
Gates, Henry L, and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. W.W. Norton & Co., 1996.
Roses, Lorraine E, and Ruth E. Randolph. Harlem’s Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900-1950. Harvard University Press, 1996.
Andrews, William L. The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology. W.W. Norton & Co., 1998.
Coles, Robert, Randy-Michael Testa, and Michael H. Coles. Growing Up Poor: A Literary Anthology. New York: New Press, 2001.
Bausch, Richard, and R V. Cassill. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. W. W. Norton, 2015.
For Younger Readers
Cohn, Amy L., and Molly Bang. From Sea to Shining Sea: A Treasury of American Folklore and Folk Songs. New York: Scholastic, 1993.
Lyons, Mary E. Sorrow’s Kitchen: The Life and Folklore of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1993.
McKissack, Pat, and Fredrick McKissack. Zora Neale Hurston, Writer and Storyteller. Berkeley Heights NJ: Enslow, 2002.
Fradin, Judith B., and Dennis B. Fradin. Zora!: The Life of Zora Neal Hurston. Boston: Clarion Books, 2012.
Schatz, Kate, and Stahl M. Klein. Rad American Women A-Z. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2015.
SECONDARY SOURCES
Selected Scholarly Articles
Crabtree, Claire. “The Confluence of Folklore, Feminism and Black Self-Determination in Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God.’” The Southern Literary Journal 17.2 (1985): 54–66.
Deck, Alice A. “Autoethnography: Zora Neale Hurston, Noni Jabavu, and Cross-Disciplinary Discourse.” Black American Literature Forum 24. 2 (1990): 237–256.
Duck, Leigh Anne. “‘Go There Tuh Know There’: Zora Neale Hurston and the Chronotype of the Folk.” American Literary History 13.2 (2001): 265–294.
Dutton, Wendy. “The Problem of Invisibility: Voodoo and Zora Neale Hurston.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 13.2 (1993): 131–152.
Jordan, Jennifer. “Feminist Fantasies: Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God.’” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 7.1 (1988): 105–117.
Lupton, Mary Jane. “Zora Neale Hurston and the Survival of the Female.” The Southern Literary Journal 15.1 (1982): 45–54.
Kraut, Anthea. “Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance Performances of Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine Dunham.” Theatre Journal 55.3 (2003): 433–450.
Brooks, Daphne A. “‘Sister, Can You Line It Out?”: Zora Neale Hurston and the Sound of Angular Black Womanhood.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 55.4 (2010): 617–627.
Marcucci, Olivia. “Zora Neale Hurston and the Brown Debate: Race, Class, and the Progressive Empire.” The Journal of Negro Education 86.1 (2017): 13–24.
Maner, Sequioa. “’Where Do You Go When You Go Quiet?’: The Ethics of Interiority in the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Beyoncé.” Meridians 17.1 (2018): 184-204.
Conference Proceedings and Published Bibliographies
Sheffey, Ruthe T. A Rainbow Round Her Shoulder: The Zora Neale Hurston Symposium Papers. Baltimore, MD: Morgan State University Press, 1982.
Grant, Alice M. All About Zora: Proceedings of the Academic Conference of the First Annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts, January 26-27, 1990, Eatonville, Florida. Winter Park, FL: Four-G Publishers, 1999.
Newson, Adele S. An Annotated Bibliography of Critical Response to Zora Neale Hurston. 1986. Michigan State University, PhD dissertation.
Davis, Rose P, and Zora N. Hurston. Zora Neale Hurston: An Annotated Bibliography and Reference Guide. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1997.
ARCHIVAL HOLDINGS
Dedicated Zora Neale Hurston Collections
Zora Neale Hurston Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Includes correspondence, manuscripts, and drafts of published writings. Link
Zora Neale Hurston Plays, Library of Congress. Includes ten unpublished typescripts of plays written by Hurston. Link
Zora Neale Hurston Papers, Smathers Libraries, University of Florida. “Correspondence, newspaper clippings, articles, manuscripts, photographs, miscellaneous personal papers. Correspondence concerning race relations, Hurston’s writings and fieldwork, personal matters; manuscripts of articles, short stories, plays; biographical material about Zora Neale Hurston.” Link
Zora Neale Hurston Collection. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. Includes nine poems, one short story, and correspondence. Link
WORKS CONSULTED
Biography
Atlas, Nava. “Zora Neale Hurston.” 20 March 2018. Literary Ladies Guide.
https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/author-biography/hurston-zora-neale/
Gates, Jr., Henry Louis and Sieglind Lemke. “Introduction.” Zora Neale Hurston. The Complete Stories. Edited by Vivian Bowden et al. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Norwood, Arlisha R. “Zora Neale Hurston, 1891-1960.” [2017.] National Women’s History Museum. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/zora-hurston
Zora Neale Hurston Trust. “About Zora Neale Hurston.” Zora Neale Hurston: The Official Website. https://www.zoranealehurston.com/about/
“Zora Neale Hurston.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zora_Neale_Hurston
Bibliographic Resources
Guide to the Zora Neale Hurston Papers. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida. http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/manuscript/hurston/hurston.htm
The Online Books Page: Serials. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/serials.html
“Published Genres.” The Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive. University of Central Florida. https://chdr.cah.ucf.edu/hurstonarchive/?p=published-genres
West, Genevieve, editor. “Introduction.” Zora Neale Hurston. Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick. New York: HarperCollins, 2020.
WorldCat. https://www.worldcat.org/advancedsearch
Zora Neale Hurston Collection (Finding Aid). Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale University. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/990