DuBose Heyward

Edwin DuBose Heyward (August 31, 1885 – June 16, 1940)^[1][2] was a white American author best known for his 1925 novel Porgy. This novel was the basis for the play by the same name (which he co-authored with his wife Dorothy) and, in turn, the opera Porgy and Bess with music by George Gershwin.

Life and career

Heyward was born in 1885 in Charleston, South Carolina and was a descendant of Thomas Heyward, Jr., who was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of South Carolina. As a child and young man Heyward was frequently ill; he also caught polio when he was eighteen, then two years later contracted typhoid fever and the following year fell ill with pleurisy. Although he described himself as " a miserable student" who was uninterested in learning, and dropped out of high school in his first year, aged fourteen, he had a lifelong and serious interest in literature and passed the time in his sickbed writing verses and stories.

In 1913 Heyward wrote a one-act play, An Artistic Triumph, which was produced in a local theater. Although a derivative work which reportedly showed little promise, this minor success encouraged him to pursue a literary career. In 1917, while convalescing from his illnesses, he began to devote himself seriously to fiction and poetry. In 1918 his first published short story, "The Brute," appeared in Pagan, a Magazine for Eudaemonists. The next year he met Hervey Allen, who was then teaching at the nearby Porter Military Academy. They became close friends and formed the Poetry Society of South Carolina, which helped spark a revival of southern literature; Heyward edited the society's yearbooks until 1924 and contributed much of their content. His poetry was well received, earning him a Contemporary Verse award in 1921. In 1922 he and Allen jointly published a collection, Carolina Chansons: Legends of the Low Country and they jointly edited a southern issue of Poetry magazine. During this period Heyward and a friend, Henry T. O'Neill, had operated a successful insurance and real estate company and by 1924 Heyward had achieved a measure of financial independence, allowing him to give up business and devote himself full time to literature. Between stints of writing he supplemented his income by lecturing on southern literature at colleges.^[3]

The poet and playwright Langston Hughes said Heyward was one who saw "with his white eyes, wonderful, poetic qualities in the inhabitants of Catfish Row that makes them come alive."^[4] Biographer James M. Hutchisson characterizes Porgy as "the first major southern novel to portray blacks without condescension" and states that the libretto to Porgy and Bess was largely Heyward's work.^{[citation needed]} Many critics have believed that Heyward was sympathetic in his portrayal of the Southern black. Others, however, have noted that the characters in Porgy, though viewed sympathetically, are still viewed for the most part as stereotypes.^{[citation needed]}

Heyward and his wife Dorothy, whom he met at the MacDowell Colony in 1922, spent many years in Charleston, where he taught at the Porter Military Academy, while observing and thinking deeply about the lives of blacks of that area. His mother participated in an amateur Southern singing society performing Gullah songs, and he sometimes joined her. It was open to anyone whose family had lived on a plantation, whether as owner or slave.^{[citation needed]} In Charleston, Heyward found inspiration for his book, including what would become the setting (Catfish Row) and the main character (a disabled man named Porgy). Literary critics cast Heyward as an authority on Southern literature, later writing, "Heyward's attention to detail and reality of the Southern black's lifestyle was not only sympathetic but something that no one had ever seen done before."^{[citation needed]}

Opening on Broadway in 1927, the non-musical play "Porgy" was a considerable success, more so than the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess eight years later. The plot line of the opera follows the play almost exactly, while both differ greatly from the novel, particularly in the ending. Large sections of dialogue from the play were set to music for the recitatives in the opera.

In his introduction to the section on DuBose Heyward in Invisible Giants: Fifty Americans Who Shaped the Nation But Missed the History Books, Stephen Sondheim wrote:

"DuBose Heyward has gone largely unrecognized as the author of the finest set of lyrics in the history of the American musical theater - namely, those of Porgy and Bess. There are two reasons for this, and they are connected. First, he was primarily a poet and novelist, and his only song lyrics were those that he wrote for Porgy. Second, some of them were written in collaboration with Ira Gershwin, a full-time lyricist, whose reputation in the musical theater was firmly established before the opera was written. But most of the lyrics in Porgy - and all of the distinguished ones - are by Heyward. I admire his theater songs for their deeply felt poetic style and their insight into character. It's a pity he didn't write any others. His work is sung, but he is unsung."

The novel Porgy became a bestseller in 1926. Heyward continued to explore writing with another novel set in Catfish Row, Mamba's Daughters (1929), which he and Dorothy again adapted as a play.

Heyward wrote Brass Ankle, a play produced in 1931 in New York, which dealt with issues of mixed-race ancestry and its impact on a white couple in a small southern town. Reviewers treated his play favorably as a version of the "tragic mulatto", but it was not a commercial success.

His work includes "Jasbo Brown and other poems" published in 1924, and the children's book, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes published in 1939, as well as the screenplay for the adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones (1933).

His novella Star Spangled Virgin was about the domestic life, problems and creative solutions of a native hustler named Adam Work. Heyward depicts the book's setting of Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands as an idyllic native society, based on a small farming economy which breaks down due to the misguided programs of the New Deal.

Heyward died from a heart attack in June 1940,^[5] at the age of 54, in Tryon, North Carolina.^[1]

External links

• Works by DuBose Heyward at Project Gutenberg
• Porgy edited with introduction and resources by Kendra Hamilton, American Studies at the University of Virginia. This article contains an error; the 1959 film of Porgy and Bess was released by Columbia Pictures, not by MGM.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Flora, Joseph M. (2006). "DuBose Heyward". In Flora, Joseph M.. Southern Writers: A New Biographical Dictionary. Vogel, Amber; Giemza, Bryan. Louisiana State University Press. p. 198. ISBN 0-8071-3123-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=xxd451POnpYC&lpg=PA198&dq=DuBose%20Heyward%201940&pg=PA198#v=onepage&q=DuBose%20Heyward%201940&f=false. Retrieved June 15, 2010. 
2. ^ Hutchisson, James M. (2000). DuBose Heyward: A Charleston Gentleman and the World of Porgy and Bess. University Press of Mississippi. p. 5. ISBN 1-57806-250-0. http://books.google.com/books?id=38EA8_ffZ9UC&lpg=PP1&dq=DuBose%20Heyward&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved June 15, 2010. 
3. ^ MY Hero Project - Poet Heroes - DuBose Heyward
4. ^ Killens, John O.,ed. (1960). "”Writers: Black and White”". The American Negro Writer and His Roots: Selected Papers from the First Conference of Negro Writers, March, 1959. New York: American Society of African Culture. 
5. ^ SCIWAY: South Carolina's Information Highway - Dubose Heyward: An Unknown Children'S Treasure

References

• Hollis, Alpert (1990). The Life and Times of Porgy and Bess. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-58339-6. 

Persondata
Name	Heyward, DuBose
Alternative names	Heyward, Edwin DuBose (birth name)
Short description	Novelist, playwright, poet
Date of birth	August 31, 1885
Place of birth	Charleston, South Carolina, United States
Date of death	June 16, 1940
Place of death	Tryon, North Carolina, United States