"RICHLY PACKED WITH STRANGE INFORMATION… STRIKINGLY DRAMATIC": FIRST EDITION OF ZORA NEALE HURSTON'S TELL MY HORSE, INSCRIBED BY HER

HURSTON, Zora Neale. Tell My Horse. Philadelphia and New York: J.B. Lippincott, (1938). Octavo, original striped red and blue cloth, photographic endpapers, original dust jacket. $38,500.

First edition of Hurston's major anthropological work focusing on voodoo and Caribbean folklore, vividly affirming her resolve to "tell stories that reflected the truth, as she knew it, of black people’s lives," with photographic frontispiece and 25 plates, scarce in original dust jacket, inscribed on the half title by the author in red ink: "Sincerely yours, Zora Neale Hurston."

In the 1930s Hurston, trained as an anthropologist, made a series of visits to Haiti and Jamaica using a Guggenheim Fellowship and fellowship extension, hoping to sort out the truth from the rumors when it came to the little-studied voodoo practices of the islands. She was determined to "tell stories that reflected the truth, as she knew it, of black people's lives… 'My ultimate purpose,' she asserted in her Guggenheim application,' is to collect for scientific scrutiny all phases of Negro folk life… that shall give a true picture'" (Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows, 285), Participating as a hounci, a first-level initiate, rather than as an observer, Hurston engaged in voodoo rites and studied Caribbean folklore. She focused her considerable literary talents on the history of the native black population and their unique culture. This book, one of the finest first-person accounts of Caribbean voodoo culture and practice resulted. On publication Tell My Horse won praise as an "intensely interesting book richly packed with strange information… strikingly dramatic, yet simple and unrestrained" (New York Times)."Seldom has there been a happier combination than that of the vivid, fantastic folklore of the West Indies and interpreter Zora Neale Hurston" (New York Herald Tribune). Bookplate of Elfreida Hartt, member of the Albany Council for Fair Employment Practices and author of "It Can Be Done," an article about color-blind hiring at an Albany iron foundry (Common Ground, Spring 1945).

Inner paper hinges cracked but holding, light rubbing to cloth; dust jacket with small chips to edges and extremities, one small tape repair. A very good signed copy in the scarce original jacket.