Dunbar, Paul Laurence:

$2,500 · Offered by William Reese Company

A PLANTATION PORTRAIT. A very rare and unusual Dunbar item, produced in small numbers by Dunbar's long-time publishers, Dodd, Mead & Company, as a holiday gift. This decorative pamphlet collects many of the author's popular dialect works on the theme of Southern life, such as "After a Visit," "The Spellin'-Bee," "Wadin' in de Crick," "Song of Summer," and "A Christmas Folk-Song." According to Publisher's Weekly from December 16, 1911, "Among the dainty little booklets to be used as substitutes for Christmas cards which Dodd, Mead & Company have issued for this year...is a little collection of poems, A Plantation Portrait, by Paul Laurence Dunbar." This is corroborated by the front free endpaper, which includes a printed border in which to address a recipient "With season's greetings from...," in this copy filled out in pencil to "Rose" from "Veda."The BAL makes note of this scarce item but does not locate any copy, and while most of Dunbar's works are very well represented in hundreds of institutions, OCLC records only twelve copies of A Plantation Portrait. An unusual and attractive work by one of the most popular and prolific African-American poets of the turn of the century.

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