The Richard Wright Autobiography Covers Lyrics

The first version of Richard Wright's autobiography Black Boy was published in 1945. The book was 228 pages. The 2006 edition of Wright's autobiography -- with a slightly expanded title Black Boy (American Hunger) -- is 448 pages and includes a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edward P. Jones. Over the decades, the book went through various editorial changes and extensions.

The publication and reprinting processes of Wright's autobiography includes a fascinating visual history, especially the different covers of the book. What follows are examples and descriptions of several of the covers.

- 1945 first edition. Harper and Row.
- 1951 edition. Signet.
- 1959 edition. Ace Books.
- 1963 edition. Signet.
- 1966 edition. Perennial Classic, Harper & Row.
- 1966 edition. Perennial Classic.
- 1970 album cover.
- 1977 American Hunger edition. Harper & Row.
- 1986 edition. Longman Imprint Books.
- 1989 edition. Perennial Library, Harper & Row.
- 1993 edition. HarperPerennial.
- 1998 edition. Perennial Classics.
- 2005 edition. HarperCollins.
- 2006 edition. HarperPerennial.
- 2008 edition. HarperPerennial Modern Classics.

How to Format Lyrics:

  • Type out all lyrics, even repeating song parts like the chorus
  • Lyrics should be broken down into individual lines
  • Use section headers above different song parts like [Verse], [Chorus], etc.
  • Use italics (<i>lyric</i>) and bold (<b>lyric</b>) to distinguish between different vocalists in the same song part
  • If you don’t understand a lyric, use [?]

To learn more, check out our transcription guide or visit our transcribers forum

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Genius Annotation

The covers of Richard Wright’s autobiography Black Boy offer an enriching visual history of re-presenting a major work by an African American author over several decades.

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