Jean Toomer (born Nathan Pinchback Toomer; December 26, 1894 – March 30, 1967) was an American poet and novelist commonly associated with the

Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the t ...

, though he actively resisted the association, and with modernism. His reputation stems from his novel ''

Cane Cane or caning may refer to: *Walking stick or walking cane, a device used primarily to aid walking * Assistive cane, a walking stick used as a mobility aid for better balance *White cane, a mobility or safety device used by many people who are ...

'' (1923), which Toomer wrote during and after a stint as a school principal at a black school in rural Sparta, Georgia. The novel intertwines the stories of six women and includes an apparently autobiographical thread; sociologist

Charles S. Johnson Charles Spurgeon Johnson (July 24, 1893 – October 27, 1956) was an American sociologist and college administrator, the first black president of historically black Fisk University, and a lifelong advocate for racial equality and the advance ...

called it "the most astonishingly brilliant beginning of any Negro writer of his generation". He resisted being classified as a Negro writer, as he identified as "American". For more than a decade Toomer was an influential follower and representative of the pioneering spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff. Later in life he took up Quakerism. Toomer continued to write poetry, short stories and essays. His first wife died soon after the birth of their daughter. After he married again in 1934, Toomer moved with his family from New York to

Doylestown, Pennsylvania Doylestown is a borough and the county seat of Bucks County in Pennsylvania, United States. It is located northwest of Trenton, north of Center City, Philadelphia, southeast of Allentown, and southwest of New York City. As of the 2020 ...

. There he became a member of the

Religious Society of Friends Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

(also known as Quakers) and retired from public life. His papers are held by the Beinecke Rare Book Library at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

Ancestry

Born Nathan Pinchback Toomer in Washington, D.C. in 1894, the son of Nathan Toomer (1839–1906), a former enslaved man and farmer of mixed race, and his third wife Nina Elizabeth Pinchback (1866–1909), whose parents became

free people of color In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color (French: ''gens de couleur libres''; Spanish: ''gente de color libre'') were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not ...

prior to the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...

. His father was born into slavery in

Chatham County, North Carolina Chatham County ( )
, from the North Carolina Collection's website at the

Houston County, Georgia in the 1850s. After the death of John Toomer, his brother Henry Toomer became owner of the family with Nathan assigned to be his personal valet and assistant. Nathan would remain in this position after the Civil War and learned the ways of the

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White ...

upper class. He later took his former enslaver's surname, "Toomer" after emancipation.Kent Anderson Leslie, "Amanda America Dickson, (1849–1893)"
History and Archaeology, ''New Georgia Encyclopedia'', 2003/2013 His father was married three times. His first marriage produced four daughters. After the death of his first wife, Nathan Sr. married Amanda America Dickson, a former enslaved woman of mixed race whose inheritance from her white father resulted in great wealth. She was called the "wealthiest colored woman in America."Kent Anderson Leslie and Willard B. Gatewood Jr. "'This Father of Mine ... a Sort of Mystery': Jean Toomer's Georgia Heritage"
''Georgia Historical Quarterly'' 77 (winter 1993) She died intestate in 1893 after about a year of marriage. A legal struggle with her children, which did not end until years after his third marriage, left the senior Nathan with little to no inheritance. In 1893, the now 54 year old widower married 28-year-old Nina Elizabeth Pinchback, another wealthy young woman of color. She was born in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

as the third child of Nina Emily Hawthorne and politician P. B. S. Pinchback, both of mixed heritage. Her father was suspicious of Nathan Toomer and strongly opposed his daughter's choice for marriage, but ultimately acquiesced. Born from this union and named Nathan after his father, Toomer would later use "Jean" as his first name at the start his literary career.

Early life

Toomer's father soon abandoned his wife and his young son, returning to Georgia seeking to obtain a portion of his late second wife's estate. Nina divorced him and took back her

maiden name When a person (traditionally the wife in many cultures) assumes the family name of their spouse, in some countries that name replaces the person's previous surname, which in the case of the wife is called the maiden name ("birth name" is also use ...

of Pinchback; she and her son returned to live with her parents in Washington D.C. Angered by her husband's abandonment, Nina's father insisted they use another name for her son and started calling him Eugene, after the boy's godfather.Cynthia Earl Kerman, ''The Lives of Jean Toomer: A Hunger for Wholeness''
LSU Press, 1989, p. 29 He received a variety of nicknames by various family members. Toomer would see his father only once more in 1897 before Nathan Sr.'s death in 1906. As a child in Washington D.C., Toomer attended segregated Black schools. After his mother remarried, they moved to suburban

New Rochelle, New York New Rochelle (; older french: La Nouvelle-Rochelle) is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state. In 2020, the city had a population of 79,726, making it the seventh-largest in the state o ...

and the youth began to attend an all-white school. After his mother's death in 1909, when he was 15, Toomer returned to D.C. to live with his maternal grandparents. He graduated from the

M Street High School M Street High School, also known as Perry School, is a historic former school building located in the Northwest Quadrant of Washington, D.C. It has been listed on the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites since 1978 and it was listed on ...

, a prestigious academic Black high school in the city with a national reputation.

Education

Between 1914 and 1917, Jean attended six institutions of higher education (the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

, the Massachusetts College of Agriculture, the American College of Physical Training in Chicago, the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

, and the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

) studying agriculture, fitness, biology, sociology, and history, but he never completed a degree. His wide readings among prominent contemporary poets and writers, and the lectures he attended during his college years, shaped the direction of his writing.

Career

After leaving college, Toomer returned to Washington, DC. He published some short stories and continued writing during the volatile social period following

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. He worked for some months in a shipyard in 1919, then escaped to middle-class life. Labor strikes and

race riots An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more contending ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's positio ...

victimizing Black people occurred in numerous major industrial cities during the summer of 1919, which became known as Red Summer as a result. At the same time, it was a period of artistic ferment. Toomer devoted eight months to the study of Eastern philosophies and continued to be interested in this subject. Some of his early writing was political, and he published three essays from 1919 to 1920 in the prominent

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

paper '' New York Call''. His work drew from the socialist and "New Negro" movements of New York. He also read new American writing, such as Waldo Frank's '' Our America'' (1919). In 1919, he adopted "Jean Toomer" as his literary name, and it was the way he was known for most of his adult life.Kerman (1989), ''The Lives of Jean Toomer'', p. 29 By his early adult years, Toomer resisted racial classifications, wanting to be identified only as an American. He gained experience in both white and "colored" societies, and resisted being classified as a Negro writer. He grudgingly allowed his publisher of ''

'' to use that term to increase sales, as there was considerable interest in new Negro writers."Introduction," ''The Letters of Jean Toomer, 1919–1924''
University of Tennessee Press, 2006 As Richard Eldridge has noted, Toomer "sought to transcend standard definitions of race. I think he never claimed that he was a white man. He always claimed that he was a representative of a new, emergent race that was a combination of various races. He averred this virtually throughout his life."
''New York Times'', 26 December 2010, accessed 27 March 2014 William Andrews has noted he "was one of the first writers to move beyond the idea that any black ancestry makes you black." Jean Toomer Drawing (c

In 1921 Toomer took a job for a few months as a principal at a new rural agricultural and

manual labor college A manual labor college was a type of school in the United States, primarily between 1825 and 1860, in which work, usually agricultural or mechanical, supplemented academic activity. The manual labor model was intended to make educational opportuni ...

for Black people in Sparta, Georgia. Southern schools were continuing to recruit teachers from the North, although they had also trained generations of teachers since the Civil War. The school was in the center of Hancock County and the Black Belt 100 miles southeast of Atlanta, near where his father had lived. Exploring his father's roots in Hancock County, Toomer learned that he sometimes passed for white. Seeing the life of rural Blacks,

racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Intern ...

, and virtual labor

peonage Peon (English , from the Spanish ''peón'' ) usually refers to a person subject to peonage: any form of wage labor, financial exploitation, coercive economic practice, or policy in which the victim or a laborer (peon) has little control over em ...

in the

Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the wa ...

led Toomer to identify more strongly as

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

and with his father's past. Several

lynching Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...

s of Black men took place in Georgia during 1921 and 1922, as whites continued to violently enforce

white supremacy White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White ...

. In 1908 the state had ratified a constitution that disenfranchised most Black people and many poor whites by raising barriers to voter registration. Other former Confederate states had passed similar laws since 1890, led by Mississippi, and they maintained such disenfranchisement essentially into the late 1960s. By Toomer's time, the state was suffering labor shortages due to thousands of rural Blacks leaving in the Great Migration to the North and Midwest. Planters feared losing their pool of cheap labor. Trying to control their movement, the legislature passed laws to prevent outmigration. It also established high license fees for Northern employers recruiting labor in the state. This was a formative period for Toomer; he started writing about it while still in Georgia and, while living in Hancock County, submitted the long story "Georgia Night" to the socialist magazine '' The Liberator'' in New York."Jean Toomer"
Poets.org, accessed 27 Dec 2010 Toomer returned to New York, where he became friends with Waldo Frank. They had an intense friendship through 1923, and Frank served as his mentor and editor on his novel ''Cane.'' The two men came to have strong differences.

''Cane''

During Toomer's time as principal of Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute in Georgia, he wrote stories, sketches, and poems drawn from his experience there. These formed the basis for ''Cane'', his High Modernist novel published in 1923. ''Cane'' was well received by both Black and white critics. ''Cane'' was celebrated by well-known African-American critics and artists, including

Claude McKay Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay Order of Jamaica, OJ (September 15, 1890See Wayne F. Cooper, ''Claude McKay, Rebel Sojourner In The Harlem Renaissance (New York, Schocken, 1987) p. 377 n. 19. As Cooper's authoritative biography explains, McKay's ...

, Nella Larsen,

Richard Wright Richard Wright may refer to: Arts * Richard Wright (author) (1908–1960), African-American novelist * Richard B. Wright (1937–2017), Canadian novelist * Richard Wright (painter) (1735–1775), marine painter * Richard Wright (artist) (born 19 ...

Langston Hughes James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, H ...

, and Wallace Thurman. ''Cane'' is structured in three parts. The first third of the book is devoted to the Black experience in the Southern farmland. The second part of ''Cane'' is more urban and concerned with Northern life. The conclusion of the work is a prose piece entitled "Kabnis." People would call Toomer's ''Cane'' a mysterious brand of Southern psychological realism that has been matched only in the best work of

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...

. Toomer was the first poet to unite folk culture and the elite culture of the white avant-garde. The book was reissued in 1969, two years after Toomer's death. ''Cane'' has been assessed since the late 20th century as also an "analysis of class and caste", with "secrecy and

miscegenation Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...

as major themes of the first section". He had conceived it as a short-story cycle, in which he explores the tragic intersection of female sexuality, Black manhood, and industrial modernization in the South. Toomer acknowledged the influence of

Sherwood Anderson Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...

's ''

Winesburg, Ohio ''Winesburg, Ohio'' (full title: ''Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life'') is a 1919 short story cycle by the American author Sherwood Anderson. The work is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard, from the ...

'' (1919) as his model, in addition to other influential works of that period. He also appeared to have absorbed ''

The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of Modernist poetry in English, modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the ...

'' of T. S. Eliot and considered him to be one of the American group of writers he wanted to join, "artists and intellectuals who were engaged in renewing American society at its multi-cultural core."Charles Scruggs, ''Jean Toomer and the Harlem Renaissance'' - book review
, ''African American Review,'' Spring, 2002, accessed 15 January 2011 Many scholars have considered ''Cane'' to be Toomer's best work. ''Cane'' was hailed by critics and has been considered as an important work of both the

and Modernism. However, as previously stated, Toomer resisted racial classification and did not want to be marketed as a "Negro" writer. As he wrote to his publisher

Horace Liveright Horace Brisbin Liveright (pronounced "LIVE-right," anglicized by Horace's father from the German ''Liebrecht;'' 10 December 1884 – 24 September 1933) was an American publisher and stage producer. With Albert Boni, he founded the Modern Lib ...

, "My racial composition and my position in the world are realities that I alone may determine." Toomer found it more difficult to get published throughout the 1930s, the period of the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, as did many authors.

Later work

In the 1920s, Toomer and Frank were among many Americans who became deeply interested in the work of the spiritual leader George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, from Russia, who had a lecture tour in the United States in 1924. That year, and in 1926 and 1927, Toomer went to France for periods of study with Gurdjieff, who had settled at

Fontainebleau Fontainebleau (; ) is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the ''arrondissemen ...

. He was a student of Gurdjieff until the mid-1930s. Much of his writing from this period on was related to his spiritual quest and featured allegories. He no longer explored African-American characters. Some scholars have attributed Toomer's artistic silence to his ambivalence about his identity in a culture insistent on forcing binary racial distinctions. Wallace Thurman, Dorothy Peterson, Aaron Douglas, and Nella Larsen, along with

Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on hoodoo. The most popular of her four n ...

and

George Schuyler George Samuel Schuyler (; February 25, 1895 – August 31, 1977) was an American writer, journalist, and social commentator known for his conservatism after he had initially supported socialism. Early life George Samuel Schuyler was born in ...

, were among those known to have been Toomer's students in the Gurdjieff work during this period. Toomer continued with his spiritual exploration by traveling to India in 1939. Later he studied the psychology developed by

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, ph ...

, the mystic

Edgar Cayce Edgar Cayce (; 18 March 1877 – 3 January 1945) was an American clairvoyant who claimed to channel his higher self while in a trance-like state. His words were recorded by his friend, Al Layne; his wife, Gertrude Evans, and later by his s ...

, and the

Church of Scientology The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious ...

, but reverted to Gurdjieff's philosophy. Toomer wrote a small amount of fiction in this later period. Mostly he published essays in Quaker publications during these years. He devoted most of his time to serving on Quaker committees for community service and working with high school students.Keith Hulett, "Jean Toomer"
''New Georgia Encyclopedia Library'', accessed 8 February 2011 His last literary work published during his lifetime was ''Blue Meridian'', a long poem extolling, "the potential of the American race". He stopped writing for publication after 1950. He continued to write privately, however, including several autobiographies and a poetry volume titled, ''The Wayward and the Seeking''. He died in 1967 after several years of poor health.

Marriage and family

In 1931 Toomer married writer

Margery Latimer Margery Bodine Latimer (February 6, 1899 – August 16, 1932), born in Portage, Wisconsin, was an American writer, feminist theorist, and social activist. She moved to New York City before finishing college and became involved in its cultural life ...

in Wisconsin. While traveling on the West Coast, their union was covered in sensational terms by a Hearst reporter. An anti-

scandal broke, incorporating rumors about the commune they had organized earlier that year in Portage, Wisconsin. West Coast and Midwest press outlets were aroused and ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' magazine sent a reporter to interview them. Toomer was criticized violently by some for marrying a white woman.Anastasia Carol Curwood, ''Stormy Weather: Middle-Class African American Marriages between the Two World Wars''
University of North Carolina Press, 2010, p. 75 Latimer was a respected young writer known for her first two novels and short stories. Diagnosed with a heart leak, she suffered a hemorrhage and died during childbirth in August 1932, when their first child was born. Toomer named their only daughter Margery in his wife's memory. In 1934 the widower Toomer married a second time, to Marjorie Content, a New York photographer. She was the daughter of Harry and Ada Content, a wealthy German-Jewish family. Her father was a successful stockbroker. Marjorie Content had been married and divorced three times. Because Toomer was a noted writer and Content was white, this marriage also attracted notice. In 1940 the Toomers moved to

. There he formally joined the

Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

and began to withdraw from society. Toomer wrote extensively from 1935 to 1940 about relationships between the genders, influenced by his Gurdjieff studies, as well as

Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phi ...

ian psychology.Curwood (2010), ''Stormy Weather'', pp. 74–79 He had fundamentally traditional views about men and women, which he put in symbolic terms. In 1939 Toomer changed his name again, using "Nathan Jean Toomer", to emphasize that he was male. He may also have been reaching toward his paternal ancestry by this action. He usually signed his name N. Jean Toomer, and continued to be called "Jean" by friends.

Racial issues

Toomer was majority white in ancestry and his appearance was "racially indeterminate". As noted above, he lived in both Black and white societies as he was growing up and during his adult life. He did not want to be bound by race and identified as an "American", representing a new mixed culture. Given his wide experiences, he resisted being classified as a Negro writer, but his most enduring work, ''Cane'', was inspired by his time in the rural South, being an imaginative exploration of the early African-American world of his absent father. In preparing a new edition of that work, scholars

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African Ame ...

and Rudolph P. Byrd said in 2010 that, based on their research, they believe that Toomer passed for white at periods in his life. He never claimed to be white or Black, saying that he was simply an American. They note that in the 1920 and 1930 censuses he was classified as white (at that time, such data was provided by the census taker, often based on an individual's appearance, economic class, area of residence, neighbors, etc.). Toomer twice had been classified (or registered) as "Negro", in draft registrations in 1917 and later in 1942. When Toomer married Margery Latimer, a white woman, in Wisconsin in 1931, the license noted both as white. Other scholars disagree with Gates's and Byrd's interpretation of these documents, while acknowledging that Toomer tried to stretch racial boundaries. "If people didn’t ask," said William Andrews, "I expect he didn’t tell." Jean Toomer avoided identifying with clear categories of race. Instead, he wanted to be classified only as “American.” His ambivalence toward race corresponds to his interest in Quaker philosophy. In his early twenties, he attended meetings of the Religious Society of Friends in Doylestown, a Quaker group. Later he joined a meeting group there. Quakerism connects groups of different believers under the respect for everyone's belief of a creed. They encourage each other to be able to understand themselves and their own personalities. Jean Toomer's Quaker belief connects to his writings on the place of the African-American in the 20th century. He also wrote essays on

George Fox George Fox (July 1624 – 13 January 1691) was an English Dissenter, who was a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends. The son of a Leicestershire weaver, he lived in times of social upheaval and ...

and Quakerism. In his essay, “The Negro Emergent,” Toomer describes how African-Americans were able to rise from those past identifications when they were portrayed only as slaves. He said they were working to find a voice for themselves.

Legacy and archives

*Toomer's papers and unpublished manuscripts are held by the

Beinecke Library The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts. ...

. *When ''Cane'' was reprinted in 1969, it was favorably reviewed as a "Black Classic", leading to a revival of interest in Toomer's work.Charles Scruggs, Lee VanDeMarr, ''Jean Toomer and the Terrors of American History''
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998, "Introduction", accessed 15 January 2011 *Since the late 20th century, collections of Toomer's poetry and essays have been published, and his ''Essentials'' was republished, originally self-published in 1931. It included "Gurdjieffian aphorisms". *In 2002, Toomer was elected to the

Georgia Writers Hall of Fame The Georgia Writers Hall of Fame honors writers who have made significant contributions to the literary legacy of the state of Georgia. Established in 2000 by the University of Georgia Libraries’ Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Ha ...

Books by Toomer

* ''

'' (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923) * ''Problems of Civilization'', by Ellsworth Huntington,

Whiting Williams Whiting Williams (March 11, 1878 – April 14, 1975) was co-founder of the Welfare Federation of Cleveland, a predecessor to the Community Chest and United Way charitable organizations, as well as an author of popular books and articles about lab ...

, Jean Toomer and others, (New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1929) * ''Essentials: Definitions and Aphorisms'' (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1931) * ''An Interpretation of Friends Worship'' (Philadelphia: Committee on Religious Education of Friends General Conference, 1947) * ''The Flavor of Man'' (Philadelphia: Young Friends Movement of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1949) * ''The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer'' (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988)
''The Letters of Jean Toomer, 1919–1924''
University of Tennessee Press, 2006

References

External links

;Digital collections * * * ;Profiles
Poetry Foundation profile"Jean Toomer"
Jean Toomer Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University

Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, University of Georgia

''Modern American Poetry'', University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
Jean Toomer: Profile and Poems at Poets.org
;Reviews and scholarship *Barbara Foley, "Jean Toomer's Washington and the Politics of Class: From 'Blue Veins' to Seventh-Street Rebels", ''Modern Fiction Studies'' 42 (Summer 1996), 289–321.

From American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Copyright 1999 by the American Council of Learned Societies.

''Hackwriters'', May 2006.

''New York Times'', 26 December 2010. * ttps://www.npr.org/2010/12/30/132488862/A-New-Look-At-The-Life-Of-Jean-Toomer "A new look at the life of Jean Toomer"''

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

'', (Robert Siegel and Professor Byrd), 30 December 2010. (Transcript and audio, 5 mins) {{DEFAULTSORT:Toomer, Jean 1894 births 1967 deaths 20th-century American novelists African-American poets American male novelists African-American novelists Modernist writers Converts to Quakerism American Quakers Quaker writers Writers from New Rochelle, New York 20th-century American poets American male poets Harlem Renaissance 20th-century American male writers Novelists from New York (state) Dunbar High School (Washington, D.C.) alumni 20th-century African-American writers African-American male writers Students of George Gurdjieff