A novelist, short-story writer, and essayist, Ralph Ellison is considered one of America's finest authors. Resolved to become a Renaissance man, he constantly strove to conquer all realms of knowledge, including musicianship, gourmet cooking, photography, and art collecting. Perhaps his most notable achievement would be the writing of Invisible Man.

Ralph Ellison was born in March 1914. His parents named him Ralph Waldo in honor of Ralph Waldo Emerson. As a youth, he avidly read and played many musical instruments. He attended college during the Great Depression. Although Ellison was raised in Oklahoma, its atmosphere did not stifle his aspirations. Oklahoma had just recently became a state so it lacked the racial caste present in the Deep South. Ellison and his white friends were considered peers in this new and radical state.

From 1933-1936, Ellison attended Tuskegee Institute, studying music and writing. In his junior year, he suffered from financial problems and was forced to take a respite with the intention of returning to school the following semester. He moved to New York where he met Richard Wright who encouraged him to write.

Many consider Invisible Man autobiographical while others say that the novel is a collection of many different works. While Ellison did attend college for three years, unlike the Invisible Man, he was not expelled. He did stay in Harlem where he worked in a psychiatrist's office; this work inspired him to study Freud on dream symbolism, which provided knowledge that he later used in his fiction.

Ellison claims that his novel incorporates more biographical incidents from Wright's life than his own. Both Wright and IMAN were born and raised in the South. Wright worked at an optic factory while IMAN makes OPTIC white paint. In Wright's novel Black Boy, a boxer is awarded five bucks, the same offered to IMAN at the Battle Royal. Both Wright and IMAN were involved in Communism.

Invisible Man is a moving treatment of black experience in modern American literature and provides insight into the loneliness of modern city life. The book reveals problems that blacks have experienced in their search for responsibility, dignity, and equality.

With his death on April 16, 1994, came an international fame with Invisible Man influenced by the myth of the frontier of infinite possibilities.