The Library of Congress presents digital versions of ten plays written by Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) that were deposited at the U.S. Copyright Office between 1925 and 1944, and remained unpublished and mostly unproduced until they were rediscovered in 1997. Play titles such as De Turkey and de Law: A Comedy in Three Acts; Lawing and Jawing; and Polk County: A Comedy of Negro Life on a Sawmill Camp with Authentic Negro Music all reflect Hurston's life experience, travels, and especially her study of folklore in the African-American South. The web version consists of seven-hundred pages of images, so users see the original typescript plays, as well as a hand-drawn stage set in one of the plays -- Spunk, act 1, scene 2. Browse by title, or perform a keyword search across bibliographic records for the plays. There is also an illustrated chronology of Hurston's life, and links to other Hurston materials at Library of Congress.
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