Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston in 1970 while Morrison was an editor for Random House in New York City, a position in which she remained until 1983, the year after the publication of her fifth novel Beloved. Morrison’s inaugural novel received faint praise from most, though not all, reviewers, primarily because few of the reviewers for the well-known national publications understood the book. Reviews in small circulation publications such as Black World and Freedomways were notable exceptions. Nevertheless, as a first-time novelist Toni Morrison’s notices in the New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker gave her national recognition th

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Published 11 September 2003

Citation: Jimoh, A Yemisi. "The Bluest Eye". The Literary Encyclopedia. 11 September 2003.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1425, accessed 20 November 2009.]