About the Author

Ralph Waldo Ellison was born in Oklahoma in 1914. He studied music and in 1936 went to live in New York. He started contributing to the Federal Writers' Project (part of Roosevelt's New Deal) and soon his short stories and articles were published. After returning from war service in the Merchant Marines, he concentrated on his writing and, in 1952, his masterpiece Invisible Man was published, seven years after he started it. This established Ellison as a major literary figure. He died in 1994.