Introduction: the age of caricature, the age of realism -- William Dean Howells and the touch of exaggeration which typifies -- "I want a real coon": Twain and ethnic caricature -- A Jamesian art to be cultivated -- Edith Wharton's flamboyant copy -- The "curious realism" of Charles Chesnutt Why did so many of the writers who aligned themselves with the social and aesthetic aims of late 19th-century American literary realism rely on stock conventions of ethnic caricature in their treatment of immigrant African-American figures? | 
