BAUMAN RARE BOOKS 24 “She Has Something Like Genius” 29HOLIDAY, Billie and DUFTY, William. Lady Sings the Blues. Garden City, New York, 1956. Octavo, original red cloth, dust jacket, custom clamshell box. $9200 First edition of the autobiography of the immortal Billie Holiday, boldly inscribed by her: “For Shirley / Best of Everything, Billie Holiday.” On publication of Billie Holiday’s Lady Sings the Blues, the singer’s autobiography was praised for its powerful story of “a woman who is probably the foremost living singer of the blues… at her best, she has something like genius” (New York Times). Holiday gave a Carnegie Hall concert performing songs associated with Lady Sings the Blues in the year of publication; three years later she was dead at the age of 44. Text overall clean with a few small spots, traces of tape removal to endpapers, rubbing to spine lettering; price-clipped dust jacket with slight edge wear, toning to spine, tape reinforcement to flaps and edges. A very good signed copy. Boldly Inscribed By Langston Hughes And Signed By Photographer Roy DeCarava 30(DECARAVA, Roy) HUGHES, Langston. The Sweet Flypaper of Life. New York, 1955. Small octavo, original photographic and textual wrappers, custom box. $7000 First edition of this landmark collaboration between Hughes and DeCarava, preferred softcover edition, inscribed by Hughes in his trademark green ink, “Sincerely—Langston Hughes,” exceedingly scarce signed on the same page by photographer DeCarava. DeCarava is considered “the spiritual ‘father’ of much contemporary African American photography” (New York Times). Langston Hughes, already “acknowledged as the most influential black writer of his generation, and as one of the greatest American poets of all time, here composed a fictional story to accompany DeCarava’s images, creating a lyrical tale about imaginary characters to go with photographs of real people” (Roth, 138). “One of the most successful collaborations between a great writer and a great photographer ever published” (Roth, 138). Open Book, 160. Interior very fresh, light marginal toning and wear to fragile wrappers and spine. A near-fine copy.
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