Before The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois republished new editions of the 21 book “canon” of Du Bois in 19 volumes, there was the 40+ volume effort of Herbert Aptheker, published over a span of almost 20 years from 1969 to 1986. A thorough overview of Aptheker’s work was recently published in Phylon:
Phillip Luke Sinitiere, “‘Dr. Du Bois Gave Me Complete Access to His Papers’: Herbert Aptheker’s Editorial History with W.E.B. Du Bois’s Papers and Manuscripts,” Phylon 60.1 (2023): 3–36; available on JStor).
Sinitiere describes how “In late 1946 Du Bois asked Aptheker to edit his correspondence,” and when Du Bois moved to Ghana in 1961, he “deposited additional manuscript files at the Aptheker’s Brooklyn home” (“Aptheker’s Editorial History,” 4, 13). In an interesting reversal of future roles, Du Bois even wrote a preface for the first volume of Aptheker’s edited A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States (1950) (available here). After Du Bois died in 1963, Aptheker edited Du Bois’s Autobiography, and in the early 1970s, “with Shirley Graham Du Bois’s support and endorsement” Aptheker reached agreements with the University of Massachusetts Press and the Kraus-Thomson Organization to bring Du Bois’s writings to publication (“Aptheker’s Editorial History,” 15). The result was over 40 volumes of material, most of it published from 1973–1986.
In her “Preface” to the first volume of the series, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America 1638–1870, Shirley Graham Du Bois praised Aptheker’s work:
Here I would pay tribute to Herbert Aptheker. Seldom does one find such a combination of scholarship, research tenacity and dedication as this editor has brought to the Du Bois project. He has worked for years-searching, checking with Du Bois’ extensive correspondence, annotating, adding footnotes where necessary, placing entries in the historical context as revealed in the correspondence and personal papers.
For Hans Kraus’s account of the formation of the Kraus-Thomson Organization, see his A Rare Book Saga: The Autobiography of H. P. Kraus (1978) (available here).
It seems fitting that, like other parts of the W. E. B. Du Bois bibliography (see “Newspaper Columns by W. E. B. Du Bois, 1883–1885”), there are conflicting descriptions of Aptheker’s series, and there is no “standard list” available to the public that I can find. After extensive digging, including exhaustive searches of Worldcat, as well as the Library of Congress catalog (thanks to Dr. Robert Williams for this suggestion), and Sinitiere’s article (which I found after compiling my list), here are some observations.
The University of Massachusetts Press published 6 volumes, and there is no real ambiguity here: 3 volumes of correspondence, and 3 volumes of previously unpublished material. The three volumes of correspondence, originally published 1973–78 were later reprinted in 1997 and are still in print.
Ambiguities abound, however, with the Kraus-Thomson series, starting with the name of the series itself, sometimes referred to as the “Collected Published Works,” other times the “Complete Published Works,” and in other places the “Collected Published Writings.”
How many volumes were there in the Kraus-Thomson series? The most commonly reported number is 37, though I’ve seen some reviewers mention 35 or 36.
I have found 35 volumes of Du Bois’s material proper, and it appears that most consider two additional books to be part of the series—Aptheker’s Annotated Bibliography of the Published Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, and The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century, edited by Aptheker—which brings the total to 37. However, the Autobiography was not published by Kraus-Thomson, but rather by International Publishers in 1968, so its inclusion in lists of “the series” can be a source of confusion.
In addition to the 37 volume series, Aptheker’s introductions to a number of these books were later collected in one volume, The Literary Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois (Kraus-Thomson, 1989).
[NOTE TO READERS: If you locate a volume that I have missed, or have a correction to this analysis, please let me know and I can update the list accordingly]
Here, then, is my list of Aptheker’s edited volumes of Du Bois, and a pdf of the list is also available here:
The Correspondence, Collected Published Writings, and Previously Unpublished Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, edited by Herbert Aptheker, 1969–1986
The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B Du Bois and Herbert Aptheker, The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois., vol. I: 1877–1934 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973) (available here)
W. E B. Du Bois, The Correspondence of W.E.B. Du Bois, ed. Herbert Aptheker, vol. II: 1934–1944 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. Herbert Aptheker, vol. III: 1944–1963 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978) (available here)
The Collected Published Writings (or Collected Published Works)
Herbert Aptheker, Annotated Bibliography of the Published Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois (Millwood, N.Y., Kraus-Thomson, 1973) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century, ed. Herbert Aptheker, (International Publishers, 1968) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1973)
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1973)
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1973)
W. E. B. Du Bois, John Brown (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1973)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Dark Princess, a Romance (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1974) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Quest of the Silver Fleece; a Novel (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1974)
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1975) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1975) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Gift of Black Folk (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1975) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Folk, Then and Now (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1975)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1975)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1975)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1976) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, The World and Africa (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1976) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, In Battle for Peace (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1976)
The Black Flame Trilogy
- W. E. B. Du Bois, The Ordeal of Mansart (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1976)
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Mansart Builds a School (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1976)
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Worlds of Color (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus-Thomson, 1976)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Africa, Its Geography, People, and Products: And, Africa, Its Place in Modern History (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus-Thomson, 1977) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Book Reviews (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1977);
W. E. B. Du Bois, Contributions by W.E.B. Du Bois in Government Publications and Proceedings (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1980)
Writings in Periodicals Edited by W. E. B. Du Bois:
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Selections from the Brownies’ Book (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1980)
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Selections from Phylon (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1980) (available here)
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Selections from the Crisis. 1, 1911-1925, (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1983)
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Selections from the Crisis. 2, 1926-1934, (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1983)
- W. E. B. Du Bois and Herbert Aptheker, Selections from the Horizon (White Plains, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1985)
Writings in Periodicals Edited by Others (4 volumes)
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Writings by W.E.B. Du Bois in periodicals edited by others. Volume 1: 1891-1909 (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1982)
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Writings by W.E.B. Du Bois in Periodicals, Edited by Others, Volume 2: 1910-1934 (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1982)
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Writings by W.E.B. DuBois in Periodicals Edited by Others, Volume 3: 1935-1944 (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1982) (available here)
- W. E. B. Du Bois and Herbert Aptheker, Writings by W.E.B. Du Bois in Periodicals, Edited by Others Volume 4: 1945-1961 (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1982)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Writings by W.E.B. Du Bois in Non-Periodical Literature Edited by Others (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1982)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Creative Writings by W.E.B. Du Bois: A Pageant, Poems, Short Stories, and Playlets (White Plains, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1985) (available here)
W.E.B Du Bois, Pamphlets and Leaflets, ed. Herbert Aptheker (White Plains, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1986).
Newspaper Columns (2 Volumes)
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Newspaper Columns, Volume 1: 1883–1944, ed. Herbert Aptheker (White Plains, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1986)
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Newspaper Columns, Volume 2: 1945–1961, ed. Herbert Aptheker (White Plains, NY : Kraus-Thomson, 1986) (available here)
Herbert Aptheker, The Literary Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois (White Plains, N.Y. : Kraus International Publications, 1989) (available here)
Posthumous/Previously Unpublished Writings
W. E. B Du Bois, The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906-1960, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Prayers for Dark People, ed. Herbert Aptheker (University of Massachusetts Press, 1980) (available here) (available here)
W. E. B. Du Bois, Against Racism : Unpublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887-1961 (Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1985) (available here)
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