Although in the 1950s Petry gained some criti-
cal attention, following seminal essays by Afri-
can-American feminist critics such as Mary Helen
Washington, BARBARA CHRISTIAN, and Barbara
Smith in the later 20th century, Petry’s work re-
ceived renewed serious critical attention, including
such book-length works as Hazel Arnett Ervin’s
Ann Petry: A Bio-Bibliography (1993) and Hilary
Holladay’s Ann Petry (1996). Generally, critics
call attention to Petry’s style, which they describe
as controlled yet electrifying, swift yet absorbing,
gripping yet simplistic, detailed yet lyrical. Because
of her sensitivity to landscape and to personalities,
Petry is said to create narratives that allow readers
to see and to feel.
Petry was recognized for her craftsmanship
with citations, lectureships, and honorary de-
grees. In 1946 Martha Foley, the editor of The
Best American Short Stories 1946, included Petry’s
“Like a Winding Sheet” in the collection, which
she also dedicated to the writer. Petry also received
citations from the Greater Women in Connecti-
cut History and from the United Nations Asso-
ciation. She lectured at Miami University at Ohio
and was visiting professor at the University of Ha-
waii. Petry holds honorary degrees from Suffolk
University (1983), the University of Connecticut
(1988), and Mount Holyoke College (1989). The
largest collection of Petry’s manuscripts, letters,
first editions, and translations are in a special col-
lection at Boston University. Smaller collections
are at Yale University, the Woodruff Library at
the Atlanta University Center, and Emory Uni-
versity. Although Petry’s most celebrated works,
The Street and “Like a Winding Sheet,” remain
masterpieces of the African-American fiction of
Harlem, in one of her last interviews she asked to
be remembered not just for those but for all she
had written.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bell, Bernard. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradi-
tion. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1987.
Christian, Barbara. “Images of Black Women in Afro-
American Literature: From Stereotype to Charac-
ter.” In Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on
Black Women Writers, 1–30. New York: Pergamon,
1985.
Clark, Keith. “A Distaff Dream Deferred? Ann Petry
and the Art of Subversion.” African American Re-
view 26 (1992): 495–505.
Drake, Kimberly. “Women on the Go: Blues, Conjure
and Other Alternatives to Domesticity in Ann Pet-
ry’s The Street and The Narrows.” Arizona Quar-
terly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture and
Theory 54, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 65–90.
Ervin, Hazel Arnett. Ann Petry: A Bio-Bibliography.
New York: G. K. Hall, 1993.
Holladay, Hilary. Ann Petry. New York: Twayne,
1996.
Hazel Arnett ErvinPharr, Robert Deane (1916–1989)
Novelist and essayist Robert Dean Pharr was born
in Richmond, Virginia, in 1916; he grew up in
New Haven, Connecticut. Pharr returned south in
1933 to Lawrenceville, Virginia, to attend St. Paul’s
Normal and Industrial School (currently St. Paul’s
College). In 1934, he attended Lincoln University
(Pennsylvania) and completed his undergraduate
degree at Virginia Union in 1939. He continued
graduate studies at Fisk, Columbia, and New York
universities. Pharr did not have an uninterrupted
or easy transition into a writing career; instead,
Pharr confronted problems with poverty, alcohol-
ism, and illness. He worked most of his life as a
waiter, traveling along the East Coast for employ-
ment in resorts and private clubs and living in a
single-room occupancy hotel while completing
The Book of Numbers (Epps). A mentally deranged
woman destroyed the only copy of the completed
manuscript. After having a nervous breakdown,
triggered perhaps by the loss of his manuscript,
Pharr recovered and rewrote the manuscript from
memory. While waiting tables at the Columbia
University Faculty Club, Pharr asked Lewis Leary,
chair of the English department at Columbia, to
read his manuscript. Leary turned the script over
to a friend at Doubleday, which finally published it
as The Book of Numbers in 1969. It depicts urban
landscapes and the lives of black men and womenPharr, Robert Deane 413