CULLEN, Countee.

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The Ballad of the Brown Girl. An Old Ballad Retold. First edition, inscribed by the Harlem Renaissance author, "Sincerely, Countee Cullen. Nov 1927" and by the illustrator, "with sincerest regards to Mr J. H. Chapin from Charles Cullen". Chapin was the art editor at Scribner's from 1897 to 1936, where Charles Cullen (no relation) worked as an illustrator. This is number 136 of 500 copies.Cullen wrote the poem in 1923 for the Witter Bynner undergraduate poetry contest, for which he won second prize. Although he had not set out to write the poem for a political purpose, "in spite of myself... I find that I am actuated by a strong sense of race consciousness. This grows upon me, I find, as I grow older; and although I struggle against it, it colors my writing, I fear, in spite of everything I can do. There have been many things in my life that have hurt me, and I find that the surest relief from these hurts is in writing" (quoted in Perry, p. 6).

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