DUNBAR, Paul Laurence.

£300 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Howdy Honey Howdy. First edition in book form, first printing, of a collection by "one of the first influential Black poets in American literature" (Poetry Foundation).The son of enslaved parents, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) published his first collection of lyric poetry in 1892, when he was just 20 years old. His major influences then and throughout his career included Wordsworth, Keats, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Following the publication of his second collection, Majors and Minors, in 1896, he became "the first black American author to be able to support himself solely as a result of his writing. His success inspired the next generation of black writers, including James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay, to dream of and achieve literary success during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s" (ANB).Dunbar's popularity allowed the publication of the present illustrated edition, which was produced for the Christmas gift book market. Several of the poems in these editions first appeared in Dunbar's earlier, unillustrated collections. Here, they are presented alongside photographs by Leigh Richmond Miner, who produced the photographs independently whilst on leave from his role as principal photographer at the Hampton Institute. The photographs are "human studies of Black people of all ages, from children to old men and women, in natural settings about the farm, by simple homesteads, or in pleasant meadows... The poems and the illustrations alike emphasize

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