About this Item
Color by Countee Cullen - New York and London: Harper & Brothers, Published March, 1926 (according to publisher code C-A), first edition early issue, INSCRIBED by Countee Cullen on front end-page, 108 pp, 7.75 x 5.25", 8vo. In fair condition. Painted paper boards are scuffed at edges & worn/bumped at corners with exposed binding. Yellow title label on front board remains bright and clean. Yellow cloth spine tanned from sun-exposure & general age-related wear - title label dulled, but legible. Head and tail of spine chipped - exposed binding. Inscription found on front end-page: "For Isabel (Ramsay) McDonald. As good as a premier anyway. Sincerely, Countee Cullen." Ownership signature (Isabel McDonald) found at bottom edge of front end-page. Torn sticker also found on front end-page. Light toning around edges of leaves throughout text-block. Instances of finger-soiling. Rear gutter split at pages 94 - 95, exposed binding mesh. Binding intact, hinges fragile. Please see photos and ask questions, if any, before purchasing. Countee Cullen (born Countee LeRoy Porter; 1903-1946) is one of the most representative voices of the Harlem Renaissance. When his paternal grandmother and guardian died in 1918, the 15-year-old Countee was taken into the home of Reverend Frederick A. Cullen (c. 1868-1946), the paster of Salem Methodist Episcopal Church, Harlem's largest congregation. There, Countee entered the approximate center of black culture and politics in the United States and acquired both the name and awareness of this influential clergyman who was later elected president of the Harlem chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Literary critic and Harvard professor Irving Babbitt publicly lauded Cullen's The Ballad of the Brown Girl, and in 1925, Cullen graduated from New York University, was accepted in Harvard's masters program, and published this first volume of poetry, Color. In 1928, Cullen was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to write poetry in France, and he married Nina Yolande Du Bois (1900-1961), the daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois. Few social events in Harlem rivaled the magnitude of this marriage, and much of Harlem joined in the festivities that marked the joining of the Cullen and Du Bois lineages, two of its most notable families. Because of Cullen's success in both black and white cultures, and because of his romantic temperament, he formulated an aesthetic that embraced both cultures. A paradox exists, however, between Cullen's philosophy and writing. While he argued that racial poetry was a detriment to the color-blindness he craved, he was, at the same time, so affronted by the racial injustice in America that his own best verse - indeed most of his verse - gave voice to racial protest. The title of this collection, Color, was not chosen unintentionally, nor did Cullen include sections with that same title in later volumes by accident. Both early and late in his career he was, in spite of himself, largely a racial poet. This is Countee Cullen's FIRST published work of poetry, a First Edition Early Issue printed in March, 1926. INSCRIBED by Author! Extremely rare!
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