Page 26 from the typescript of “The Jungle and the Bottoms” version of Romance in Marseille, produced circa 1929–1930, and held in the James Weldon Johnson Collection at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven. The page shows that McKay crossed out the original name of the novel’s protagonist, Taloufa, and wrote above it “Lafala,” the name he would use for the longer, completed version.

Page 124 from the typescript of “Savage Loving” version of Romance in Marseille, produced circa 1932–1933, and held in the Claude McKay papers at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. This page indicates three key features of the final version of the novel: the setting is identified as “Marseille” (rather than the redacted “Dreamport,” as in the Beinecke typescript); the “Seamen’s Club” has replaced “Proletarian Hall”; and the character Big Blonde, missing from the earlier typescript, has made his vivid appearance.