SOURCE: Brawley, Benjamin. “William Stanley Braithwaite.” In The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States, pp. 89-96. New York: Duffield & Company, 1930.

In the following essay, originally published in 1918, Brawley praises Braithwaite's two collections of verse, Lyrics of Life and Love and The House of Falling Leaves.

Prominent for some years, first as poet and then as critic, has been William Stanley Braithwaite, of Boston. The work of this author belongs not so much to Negro literature as to American literature in the large, and he has encouraged and inspired a host of other writers. With singleness of purpose he has given himself to books and the book world, and it is by this devotion that he has won the distinct success that he has achieved.

In 1904 Mr. Braithwaite published a small volume of poems entitled Lyrics of Life and Love. This was followed four years later...