Page 200 - Swann Galleries - Printed & Manuscript African Americana- Sale 2308 - March 21, 2013

363 ● (LITERATURE AND POETRY.) FAUSET, JESSIE. The Chinaberry Tree.
310 pages. 8vo, original green cloth in very attractive dust jacket with three paper rein-
forcements that seem unnecessary; small bookseller’s label at bottom of the spine.
London: Elkin Mathews & Marrot, 1932 [3,000/4,000]
FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, PUBLISHED ONE YEAR AFTER THE U.S.The third novel by the
literary editor of Crisis Magazine. Quite scarce, OCLC locating only five copies in world
libraries.
364 ● (LITERATURE AND POETRY.) GRIMKE, ANGELINA W. Rachel: A Play
in Three Acts. 96, [6 blank], pages. Small 8vo, original cloth-backed boards, lettered in
gilt on the upper cover and spine; a few small spots to the cloth spine.
Boston: Cornhill, (1920) [1,500/2,500]
SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST PUBLISHED AND PRODUCED PLAY BY AN
AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMAN. Angelina Weld Grimke (1880-1958) was named for her
white great aunt Angelina Grimke Weld. Together with her sister Sarah, Angelina moved
North in the early part of the 19th century in order to have no connection with the ownership
of slaves. They became well-known abolitionist and women’s rights advocates. Angelina
Grimke was the granddaughter of the sisters’ slave-owning brother Henry and his slave Nancy
Weston. Rachel was first produced by the NAACP at the Myrtill Minor Normal School in
Washington D.C. 1916. It was later produced at the Neighborhood Theatre in New York and
in Cambridge, in1917 and collected in Alain Locke’s “Plays of Negro Life” (1927).
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