Page 204 - Swann Galleries - Printed & Manuscript African Americana- Sale 2308 - March 21, 2013

AN EXCEPTIONAL ASSOCIATION COPY
371 ● (LITERATURE AND POETRY.) HURSTON, ZORA NEALE. Moses: Man
of The Mountain. Large, thick 8vo, original pictorial brown and orange cloth showing
some light spotting to the spine. Philadelphia: Lippincott, (1939) [5,000/7,500]
AN EXCEPTIONAL ASSOCIATION COPY, INSCRIBED TO FELLOW NOVELIST ARNA BON-
TEMPS: “To Arna Bontemps who plays high trombone in God’s best band. With admiration,
Zora Neale Hurston,” a nice sidelong reference to James Weldon Johnson’s long Harlem
Renaissance poem “God’s Trombones.”(1927). Zora Neale Hurston and Arna Bontemps
were both major figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Bontemps, the author of “God Sends
Sunday” (1931) and “Black Thunder” (1936), while Hurston was known for “Jonah’s
Gourd Vine” (1934) and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (1937).
372 ● (LITERATURE AND POETRY.) JAMISON, ROSCOE C. Negro Soldiers
(“These Truly are the Brave’) and Other Poems by Roscoe C. Jamison. Second
Edition. Portrait frontispiece and 16 pages. Small, narrow 8vo. Original decorative stiff
wrappers. Kansas City: William F. Neil,1918 [300/400]
Noted by Dorothy Porter, (North American Negro Poets, page 51) but possibly not seen
because the poet’s name is misspelled as “Jamieson.” French, Fabre and Singh, 115. One of
the last poems in this slender volume, “The Edict” addresses the issue of race and justice: “All
these must die before the morning breaks; They who at God an angry finger shake, declaring
that because He made them White, That they should rule the world by sacred right . . .”
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