Jim Doherty wanted to know:
> Was there an English-language version (in the UK
or
> elsewhere) of COTTON called BACK TO AFRICA
that
> preceded the American edition?
No, the first published version was a French translation, and
the English-language version followed about a year later. I
went back and checked my authority record (the database is
freely available to anyone with enough morbid curiosity to
look at http://authorities.loc.gov/),
and here's the justification for the heading:
670 __ |a Chester Himes, 1992: |b p. 9 (under Retour en
Afrique; original manuscript title Back to Africa [first
published in the French translation, Paris, 1964]; published
in America under the title Cotton comes to Harlem, New York,
1965)
Basically, the rules tell us that when a work is published in
a language not the author's own, we need to look to reference
sources to provide a title. Looks like my source was *Chester
Himes : an annotated primary and secondary bibliography*
compiled by Michel Fabre.
> Did the American
> edition precede the film version (in which case
the
> film title would not have affected the novel's
English
> title)?
Yes it did, by about 5 years. The movie took the American
title of the novel for its own.
Time to hit the road ... Comic Con awaits!
Jim Stephenson
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