Ernest J. Gaines Four Novels: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman / In My Father’s House / A Gathering of Old Men / A Lesson Before Dying

A volume collecting four landmark novels about race and the legacy of slavery in America.

Included is A Lesson Before Dying, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and an early Oprah Book Club selection.

Born in 1933, the oldest of twelve children in a family of sharecroppers in Oscar, Louisiana, Ernest J. Gaines wrote novels and stories set on and around the former slave plantation he once called home. His works are now considered modern classics — nuanced, compassionate portraits of Black and white women and men caught in the vortex of race in America. He joins the Library of America with this volume gathering four of his greatest novels.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) tells the story of an elderly woman born into slavery who lives through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement. A living testament to the history, courage, hopes, and endurance of her people, Miss Jane remains one of the most indelible characters in American fiction.

In My Father’s House (1978) follows an activist minister organizing a civil rights protest in his town when his estranged son suddenly reappears, threatening to expose long-buried family secrets.

A Gathering of Old Men (1983) centers on a group of elderly Black men with nothing left to lose who decide to make a final stand against the racism that has shaped and constrained their lives.

A Lesson Before Dying (1993), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and an Oprah Book Club selection, tells the story of a local schoolteacher who attempts to help a young man falsely convicted of murdering a white man face execution with dignity.

A fitting tribute to a still-underappreciated American genius, this volume also includes a chronology of Gaines’s life and career written by his authorized biographer, John Wharton Lowe, along with helpful notes.