Page 205 - Swann Galleries - Printed & Manuscript African Americana- Sale 2308 - March 21, 2013

373 ● (LITERATURE AND POETRY.) JOHNSON, GEORGIA DOUGLAS.
Bronze. 101 pages. Small, squarish 8vo, original white cloth-backed printed brown paper-
covered boards with printed brown paper label up the spine; top edge silver; binding
slightly skewed. Boston: Brimmer, 1922 [3,500/5,000]
FIRST EDITION, WARMLY INSCRIBED TO AFRICAN-AMERICAN JOURNALIST AND POLITI-
CIAN ROSCOE CONKLING SIMMONS::”Dec. 27-’22. To Mr. Roscoe C. Simmons shall we
not dedicate this page to this day which we record happy + signal. Read page 15 from the
Heart of a Woman & thank every God for your exclusion. Sincerely! Georgia Douglas
Johnson.” The poem to which Johnson alludes is titled “Repulse,” and opens “Nobody cares
when I am glad/ I beat upon their hearts in glee/ ‘Drink, drink joy’s brimming cup with me/
all echoless, my ecstasy—Nobody cares when I am glad.” Georgia Douglas Johnson (circa
1880-1966), nee Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp was born in Atlanta, and received a degree
in music from Oberlin. For many years Johnson led a quiet life as the wife of Lincoln “Link”
Johnson, a prominent Washington D.C. attorney, who truly believed “a woman’s place is in
the home.” There, she was able to host a literary salon, the only one of its kind in the nation’s
capital. She published her first book of poetry, “Heart of a Woman” at the age of 41, which
was well-received but criticized for not addressing race. At the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance
she published the present collection almost as a response. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in the
Foreword to this little volume: “Those who know what it means to be a colored woman in
1922—and know it not so much in fact as in feeling, apprehension, unrest and delicate yet
stern thought—must read Georgia Douglas Johnson’s ‘Bronze.’”