"TO INTERPRET MY OWN PEOPLE THROUGH SONG AND STORY": SCARCE 1900 EDITION OF PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR'S POEMS OF CABIN AND FIELD, WITH EIGHT POEMS AND OVER 50 PHOTOGRAPHIC HALFTONES, IN ORIGINAL CLOTH
DUNBAR, Paul Laurence. Poems of Cabin and Field. Illustrated with Photographs by the Hampton Institute Camera Club and Decorations by Alice Morse. New York: Dodd Mead, 1900. Octavo, original decorative green cloth.
Second edition of the inaugural work in a series of illustrated poetry collections by Dunbar, "an important predecessor to the younger generation of poets of the Harlem Renaissance," containing eight poems and illustrated with over 50 photographic halftones, scarce in original cloth.
"Paul Laurence Dunbar's goal was 'to interpret my own people through song and story, and to prove to the many that after all we are more human than African'… Because he had no white ancestors, he was celebrated and scrutinized by the national media as a representative of his race. His charm and wit, his grace under pressure, and his ability as a speaker and author did much to give the lie to turn-of-the-century misconceptions about the racial inferiority of blacks" (ANB). Despite criticism by some for romanticizing plantation life, "Dunbar's work in dialect was overwhelmingly celebrated and adopted by his successors, particularly Langston Hughes… and today Dunbar's work has been accepted as… an important predecessor to the younger generation of poets of the Harlem Renaissance and a monumental fount of inspiration in the 20th-century African American literary tradition." The images accompanying Dunbar's eight poems in Poems of Cabin and Field were collectively made by "faculty members of the Hampton Institute Camera Club, most of them well-connected white Northerners," whose staged photographs were "largely made in African American communities in the environs of Hampton, Virginia" (Saperstein, in Pictures and Progress, 167-9). Illustrated with over 50 photographic halftones, including frontispiece. First published in 1899 as the first volume in a series of six illustrated collections of Dunbar's poetry. As issued without dust jacket. Blockson 6138.
Text and images fine, only faint toning to spine of colorful cloth. An about-fine copy.