Why the novel was declined remains a matter of speculation. Some clues are provided by the written comments that accompany a copy of the typescript submitted to Harper, which is held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. These comments, on 118 individual slips, seem to have been made by two readers, one of them likely Paul Reynolds. The other appears to be Kerker Quinn, a faculty member at the University of Illinois and the editor of the small literary magazine Accent. Both readers found the novel an uneasy mixture of realism and allegory, and Quinn in particular thought the extended depiction of police brutality against a black man in the early chapters “unbearable.” Did Harper fear the novel would be too shocking for contemporary white readers, who might not wish to be reminded of the history of violence against Black Americans? Wright’s biographer Hazel Rowley suggests this is the case when she argues the novel was rejected because it “portrayed all too clearly the arbitrary ‘justice’ of the world at a time in which publishers were looking for more rousing stories.” It is also probable that Reynolds and Aswell preferred to see Black Hope rather than The Man Who Lived Underground published as the follow-up to Wright’s best-selling novel. Like Native Son, Black Hope was a work of literary naturalism. What would Wright’s readers make of his short allegorical novel? In any case, Harper rejected it, and, with renewed solicitations from Aswell, Wright turned back to Black Hope. Two short excerpts from The Man Who Lived Underground appeared in Kerker Quinn’s Accent (Spring 1942), prompting a note of warm congratulations from Ralph Ellison to Quinn. Nothing more of Wright’s narrative was published until two years later, in April 1944, when Edwin Seaver included a short story version in Cross-Section: An Anthology of New American Writing. The differences between the novel and story are substantial. To create the story, Wright cut the entirety of the first part of the novel (the aboveground chapters, including the encounters with the police), compressed the second part (the underground chapters), and altered the apocalyptic ending in part three (reemergence into the aboveground). The story is less than half the length of the novel. Before its appearance in Eight Men in 1961, “The Man Who Lived Underground” was reprinted three times, including once in the anthology Short Stories of 1945, edited by Bennett Cerf.

A half dozen typescripts of the novel-length version of Wright’s narrative survive. The text presented here is based on the ribbon and carbon copies of the last complete typescript of the novel, both of which contain Wright’s extensive handwritten corrections and revisions. Chronologically, this typescript immediately follows the one that Wright gave to Reynolds for submission to Harper in December 1941—and then emended in the late winter or early spring of 1942, responding to the many suggestions made by his readers. Either Wright or a typist then prepared a new typescript of 199 numbered pages, reflecting all his changes up to that point. The ribbon copy is housed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the carbon copy at the Firestone Library in the Sylvia Beach Papers. Wright made emendations to the first half of his typescript (pp. 1–85) on the carbon, then continued on the ribbon copy (pp. 85–199). Together the ribbon and carbon copies constitute the late working draft that is presented here.