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Four Negro Poets.
New York: Simon & Schuster, [1927]. 8vo (8.325” x 5.5”), original staple-bound printed wrappers. 31 pp. CONDITION: Very good, two faint vertical creases to front wrapper and document tape repair at verso of front wrapper along 2” tear at right edge, slight toning and wear to spine, one small spot of soiling to rear wrapper, contents very good. First edition of this Pamphlet Poets series collection of poems by Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Claude McKay, edited by the “dean” of the Harlem Renaissance, Alain Locke. Lauding Toomer, Cullen, Hughes, and McKay as “modernists among moderns,” Locke introduces this collection of their previously-published poems as “A reflection of Negro experience true to its idiom of emotion and circumstance.” He highlights McKay’s “proud spirit…[linking] our newly insurgent race pride and consciousness with the rebel poetry of radical thought,” Toomer’s “probing into the sub-soil of Southern life,” Cullen’s “polished lyricism…[and] exuberant flow of an awakening Negro life,” and Hughes’s “democratic sweep and universality.” Biographies of the poets appear on the final page. Simon and Schuster began the “Pamphlet Poets” series just two years after the publishing house was founded, intending the 25-cent volumes as affordable introductions to poetry. The series was published for just three years, and reached sixteen titles, including a volume devoted solely to Langston Hughes, also introduced by Locke. Scarce in the trade: no examples recorded in Rare Book Hub.
Item #9607
Price: $275.00
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