Ellison,Ralph

Abstract

Despite a distinguished and vastly more prolific career as an essayist, Ralph Ellison is best known as a novelist. Rarely in any tradition has an author's first and only novel achieved the enduring eminence ofInvisible Man. Published in March 1952, it won the 1953 National Book Award. In 1965, aBook Weekpoll voted it the post‐World War II novel most likely to endure: Vladimir Nabokov'sLolitatook second, followed by J. D. Salinger'sThe Catcher in the Rye;Saul Bellow was voted the most important novelist. In 1978, aWilson Quarterlypoll affirmed theBook Weekresults by votingInvisible Manthe most distinguished American novel since World War II. By 2002, it had been translated into 20 languages, and over a million copies had been sold since Ellison's death on April 16, 1994.