Native Son was published by Harper and Brothers, New York, on 1 March 1940, in a first printing of approximately 215,000 copies (the Book-of-the-Month Club edition shipped simultaneously). It was an instant bestseller, selling 250,000 copies in its first month. No novel by a Black American had ever achieved such commercial success or generated such intense public discussion. The novel made Wright the most famous Black writer in America overnight.
The Novel
Bigger Thomas is twenty years old, Black, poor, living with his mother, sister, and brother in a single room in a rat-infested tenement on Chicago’s South Side. He is hired as a chauffeur by the Dalton family — rich, white, liberal. On his first night of work, he drives their daughter Mary Dalton and her Communist boyfriend Jan Erlone to a restaurant on the South Side. Mary gets drunk. Bigger carries her to her room. When her blind mother enters, Bigger, terrified of being found in a white woman’s bedroom, presses a pillow over Mary’s face to keep her quiet. She suffocates.
What follows is not a detective story but a psychological and political study of what the murder does to Bigger. He disposes of the body in the basement furnace, attempts to extort ransom money from the Daltons, and kills his Black girlfriend Bessie to prevent her from talking. He is captured, tried, and sentenced to death. His Communist lawyer, Boris Max, delivers a long courtroom speech arguing that Bigger is a product of American racism — that the conditions of his life made violence inevitable.
Wright’s formal innovation was to write the novel entirely from Bigger’s perspective, forcing the reader into the consciousness of a man who is violent, frightened, and morally rudimentary. The reader does not sympathise with Bigger in any conventional sense — his actions are horrifying — but Wright makes it impossible to separate Bigger’s violence from the violence of the system that produced him.
The Censorship
The Book-of-the-Month Club required cuts before accepting the novel. The most significant involved toning down the sexual content — passages describing Bigger’s arousal, Mary’s body, and the relationship with Bessie were softened or removed. Wright complied under protest. The unexpurgated text was not published until the Library of America edition of 1991, edited by Arnold Rampersad. The restored text is rawer, more uncomfortable, and, most scholars agree, significantly better.
Collecting Native Son
First edition (1940, Harper and Brothers): The trade edition had a large first printing due to BOMC selection.
Identification points:
- Harper and Brothers imprint
- “FIRST EDITION” code on copyright page (varies by printing)
- Blue cloth binding
- Dust jacket: red and black design
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket (trade first): $5,000–$15,000
- Near Fine/Very Good jacket: $2,500–$7,000
- Signed first edition: $15,000–$40,000+
- Without jacket: $200–$600
Value trajectory: Strong appreciation. Wright’s position as one of the founders of modern African American literature is secure, and Native Son is the cornerstone of his bibliography. The large first printing (BOMC selection) means copies exist, but fine copies in dust jacket are scarce — the red-and-black jacket is fragile. Signed copies are rare and extremely valuable. The novel’s permanent presence in American literature curricula ensures continued demand.
Baldwin’s Critique
James Baldwin’s essay “Everybody’s Protest Novel” (1949) attacked Native Son as a protest novel that, in its rage against racial injustice, reduced Bigger Thomas to a sociological case study rather than a fully realised human being. Baldwin argued that protest fiction ultimately dehumanised its subjects by treating them as evidence rather than as people. The critique was devastating — and it came from a writer who owed much to Wright’s example. The Wright-Baldwin argument remains one of the central debates in African American literary history, and it cannot be resolved, because both writers are right.