LITERATURE 34 “Much Of This Book, You Know, Was Written At Hollow Hills” 43HUGHES, Langston. Shakespeare in Harlem. New York, 1942. Octavo, original half orange and black cloth, dust jacket custom clamshell box. $7500 First edition of Hughes’ major book of poetry, inscribed, “Dear Noël—Much of this book, you know, was written at Hollow Hills. But the poems are of much less pleasant places. Happiness to you always! Langston. New York, February 6, 1942.” “Shakespeare in Harlem was emphatically, unashamedly about being Black… In building this book of poems on the blues, Langston had returned to the inspiration for his greatest creative period” (Rampersad, Life V.I:390). The recipient of this copy was beloved California art patron Noël Sullivan, “as close a friend as any relative Hughes ever had… for a quarter of a century Sullivan was the poet’s most trusted confidant” (Berry, Langston Hughes, 150). Hughes dedicated his first collection of short stories, Ways of White Folks (1934) to Sullivan, who regularly offered Hughes refuge at his home in San Francisco and his farm in Carmel—the “Hollow Hills” of the inscription. Sullivan eventually built Hughes his own cottage at the farm, providing an ever-ready retreat for the writer. Book fine, dust jacket with a few short closed tears, toning to spine. An excellent presentation copy to a person very important to Hughes. Inscribed Presentation First Edition Of First Book Of Rhythms, 1954 44HUGHES, Langston. The First Book of Rhythms. New York, 1954. Square quarto, original green cloth, dust jacket, custom box. $5500 First edition, first printing of the pivotal second work in Hughes’ influential series, an exceptional presentation copy boldly inscribed by him in the year of publication to his long-time friend Zell Ingram, “For Zell, sincerely, Lang, New York, May, 1954.” Ingram (1910-71), active in the Harlem Artists Guild, was Hughes’ traveling companion on a trip to Haiti and Cuba in 1930. “To Hughes, the ‘rhythms of life’ connect idioms, for the universe seems to be an almost living organism that connects all people and things” (Miller, xvii). The book’s lyrical passages on rhythms “put into music and poetry” also point to the “jazz, blues and Black vernacular speech rhythms in his poetry… Wynton Marsalis suggests that Hughes based his model for rhythm’s interconnectivity on a jazz ensemble where all the players must keep the rhythm… jazz rhythm (as opposed to metrical verse rhythm) presents a model of democratic collectivity” (Neigh, 87). First edition: with “First Printing” stated on title page. Interior clean, light rubbing to cloth at corners and spine ends. Price-clipped dust jacket with some light scuffs along gently toned spine. An extremely good inscribed copy.
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