INSCRIBED BY LANGSTON HUGHES, FIRST EDITION OF ONE-WAY TICKET

(LAWRENCE, Jacob) HUGHES, Langston. One-Way Ticket. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949. Octavo, original half black cloth, uncut and partially unopened, original dust jacket. $3000.

First edition of Hughes' powerful 12th book of poetry, featuring six dramatic full-page illustrations by pioneering Black artist Jacob Lawrence, boldly inscribed, “To Mrs. J.C. Sherard, Sincerely, Langston Hughes, St. Louis, March 24, 1950,” a splendid copy in the very elusive original dust jacket.

"Langston Hughes is one of the essential figures in American literature… as Gwendolyn Brooks once put it, he 'made us better people.'" As in One-Way Ticket, much of Hughes' poetry moves "to blues and jazz rhythms, with which Hughes experimented more rewardingly than any other important poet of this century…. [Here] the lyric, blues and folksong forms that Hughes has used to project, often with the lightest touch, the most devastating emotions and moral commentaries on life in the United States, have now been stripped almost to bareness. It is as if the poet… were pushing toward an even more direct and forceful method" (New York Times). Featured are six full-page illustrations by Jacob Lawrence, "the most widely acclaimed African American artist of this century" (Smithsonian). His early involvement with the Harlem Art Workshop led to his close association with "most of the prominent cultural figures associated with the Harlem Renaissance, including the painters Aaron Douglas and William Johnson, and the writers Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison" (New York Times). With "First Edition" on copyright page.

Book fine; light edge-wear and toning to scarce extremely good dust jacket.