Brooks, Gwendolyn

A STREET IN BRONZEVILLE [Signed]

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945. First Edition, First Printing, First State Dust Jacket. Octavo, 57 pages. In Very Good condition with a Very Good condition dust jacket. Spine black with beige lettering. Dust jacket protected with a mylar covering, price uncut: "$2.00". Dust jacket with light shelfwear, primarily to extremities, small closed tear to lower edge of rear cover. Light offsetting to interior of jacket front cover and spine from boards. Bound in publisher's black cloth, stamped in gilt and blocked in terracotta. First state jacket with "Buy War Bonds" and "No. 2296" on rear panel. Inscribed by Brooks on the front free endpaper to Ruth O'Brien McCarn. Shelved case 0.

1411188

Shelved Dupont Bookstore

Price: $4,500

NOTES

Gwendolyn Brooks was born June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, but moved at six weeks to the South Side of Chicago as a part of the Great Migration. A born writer, Brooks was greatly encouraged to write by her mother, getting her first poem published at 13 and becoming a regular contributor to the black-run paper "The Chicago Defender" by age 18. Brooks would always feel her true home was Chicago, and her works have always focused on the black experience there.

"Annie Allen" released in 1949 and would be Brooks's second book of poetry, the first being "A Street in Bronzeville" released in 1945. It released to great critical acclaim, earning the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the "Poetry" magazine's Eunice Tietjens Prize the same year. She was the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize and was also named the U.S. Poet Laureate in 1985.

Ruth O'Brien McCarn was Assistant Dean of Students at the University of Chicago beginning in 1950, the first woman to hold the post, and later Dean of Women at Northwestern University. McCarn served as President of The National Association of Deans of Women from 1951-1953. At Chicago, McCarn was a supporter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, pushing for an on-campus housing option for Black students.