Their Yesterdays was published by the Book Supply Company in 1912, and it is Wright’s most experimental work — an allegorical novel that abandons conventional characterization and plot in favor of a philosophical meditation on the stages of human life.
The protagonists are identified only as “the Man” and “the Woman” — they are not individuals but archetypes, representatives of all men and women. The novel follows them through thirteen stages of experience: Dreams, Occupation, Knowledge, Ignorance, Religion, Tradition, Temptation, Life, Death, Failure, Success, Love, and Memory. Each chapter examines one stage, alternating between the Man’s and the Woman’s experience of it.
Wright’s argument is that childhood contains the truest understanding of life — its ideals, its aspirations, its instinctive knowledge of right and wrong — and that adulthood systematically destroys this understanding through compromise, cynicism, and the substitution of worldly success for genuine fulfillment. The task of maturity is to recover the wisdom of childhood without its naiveté: to be both experienced and idealistic, both practical and visionary.
The book divided Wright’s audience: many readers found it too abstract and philosophical, missing the adventure plots and vivid settings of his earlier novels. But others — including many of Wright’s most devoted readers — considered it his deepest and most personal work.
Collecting Their Yesterdays
First edition (Book Supply Company, Chicago, 1912): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $30–$80
- Without jacket: $8–$20