Novelist, essayist, and public intellectual, James Baldwin was one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the postwar era, and one of the greatest African American writers of this century. A self-described “transatlantic commuter” who spent much of his life in France, Baldwin joined cosmopolitan sophistication with a fierce engagement in social issues. “One writes,” he stated, “out of one thing only—one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.” With singular eloquence and unblinking sharpness of observation he lived up to his credo: “I want to be an honest man and a good writer.”

The three-volume boxed set of the Library of America’s edition of his writings include all six of his novels, the story collection Going to Meet the Man, and a comprehensive, career-spanning selection of his brilliant essays, including the complete texts of his early landmark collections, Notes of a Native Son and Nobody Knows My Name, along with the passionate—and still resonant—The Fire Next Time.

Library of America series editions are printed on acid-free paper and feature Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

James Baldwin: Early Novels and Stories is kept in print by a gift from Frank A. Bennack Jr. to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.