The Re-Creation of Brian Kent was published by the Book Supply Company in 1919, returning Wright to the Ozark setting of his most beloved novel. Brian Kent is a man destroyed by the conventional world — he has been bankrupted, drunk himself into ruin, and contemplated suicide. Fleeing his past, he arrives in the Ozark hill country, where the combination of natural beauty, hard physical work, and the simple decency of the hill people begins the slow process of rebuilding him.
The “re-creation” of the title is deliberate: Wright argues that moral regeneration is not merely reform but a second creation — the making of a new self from the ruins of the old. Brian must not merely stop drinking or repay his debts; he must become a different person, with different values and different sources of meaning. The Ozark landscape provides the context for this transformation: its beauty, its demands, and its indifference to social status all contribute to stripping away the false self that Brian constructed in the city.
The novel revisits Wright’s core conviction: that the rural landscape is morally superior to the city, that nature heals what civilization damages, and that the simple life of physical work and community is the truest form of human flourishing.
Collecting The Re-Creation of Brian Kent
First edition (Book Supply Company, Chicago, 1919): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $25–$60
- Without jacket: $5–$15