A Kind of Rapture [Signed by Toni Morrison]

New York: Pantheon Books, 1998. First Edition. Signed by Toni Morrison without inscription to title page without inscription. Quarto. Unpaginated. Color photographs throughout. Photo-illustrated dust jacket. Black boards stamped in gilt; black endpapers. Dust jacket shows mild rubbing to edges with a few faint smudges. Boards show a touch of shelfwear with some minor scuffing. Binding sound and pages unmarked; a Near Fine copy. In her brief but brilliant introduction, Morrison talks of how "these two godlings, language and image, feed and form experience," and how the image of strangers may give a viewer "alarm or false reverence." Bergman's collection, however, "refuses us unearned solace and one by one by one each photograph unveils us, asserting a beauty, a kind of rapture, that is as close as can be to a master template of the singularity, the community, the unextinguishable sacredness of the human race.".