Black Americana and Abolition – 12 – Bauman Rare Books - July 2022 First Edition Of Chicago Novelist Frank London Brown’s First Novel, Trumbull Park, 1959, Accompanied By Mayhew’s Racial Terror At Trumbull Park, 1954 16. BROWN, Frank London. Trumbull Park. WITH: Mayhew Howard. Racial Terror at Trumbull Park, Chicago. Chicago, 1959, 1954. Octavo, original blue cloth, dust jacket. WITH: Slim octavo, original self-wrappers. $1250. First edition of Brown’s first novel, a distinctive association copy with laid-in printed slip from the Frank London Brown Trust Fund addressed to fellow author and activist Jack Conroy. Accompanied by the first separate edition of Mayhew’s Racial Terror at Trumbull Park. Publication of Trumbull Park, Brown’s first novel, affirmed “his place within the Chicago Black Renaissance.” It was based on the violent racism that confronted the Howards, a Black family, when they moved to the all-white Trumbull housing project (Chicago Literary Hall of Fame). Accompanying this copy is Mayhew’s Racial Terror at Trumbull Park, Chicago, documenting attacks on the Black families. This memorable association copy contains a laid-in printed document from the Frank London Brown Trust Fund, addressed to Jack Conroy in an unidentified cursive. Conroy was best known for his autobiographical novels, The Disinherited (1933) and A World to Win (1935). Conroy lived in Chicago from the late 1930s to mid1960s; he would certainly have known Frank London Brown. Book fine; light edge-wear to spine ends of near-fine dust jacket; pamphlet with light edge-wear, mild soiling to fragile wrappers. Important First Edition Of John Brown’s Life And Letters, 1861, With Mounted Vintage Albumen Frontispiece Portrait Of John Brown, A Superb Copy 17. BROWN, John. The Life and Letters of Captain John Brown. London, 1861. Small octavo, original blind-stamped brown cloth, custom clamshell box. $6500. First edition of one of the very first biographies of John Brown, published in the first year of the Civil War, featuring mounted vintage albumen frontispiece of Brown, in original cloth. Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid “was for many a jeremiad against a nation that defied God in tolerating human bondage… It hardened positions over slavery everywhere” (ANB). With the armorial bookplate of Victorian industrialist Samuel Courtauld, a prominent English abolitionist. Bookseller ticket. Only light foxing to frontispiece as usual. A splendid about-fine copy.
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