Hughes, Langston; Spingarn, Amy [frontispiece]

DEAR LOVELY DEATH [Signed]

Amenia, New York: Privately Printed at the Troutbeck Press, 1931. Limited Edition, 1/100 Copies. Octavo, unpaginated. In Very Good condition. Bound in quarter black cloth and orange printed paper. Torn tan label with black lettering to spine. Closed tearing to paper on fore edges of boards. Rubbing to corners of boards, heaviest at top corner of front board. General soiling and wear elsewhere. Edges of textblock uncut. Foxing to front and rear pastedowns. Frontispiece portrait by Amy Spingarn, with glue visible on recto of frontispiece. Light soling scattered throughout interior. Signed flat by Hughes on colophon. "With the compliments of Amy Spingarn Troutbeck Press" slip laid in. Shelved in Case 3.

1419175

Shelved Dupont Bookstore

Price: $12,500

NOTES

While at least a third of the 100 copies are represented in institutional holdings, it is incredibly scarce at auction or on the market.

From the collection of Robert and Ann Doyle, who met Langston Hughes when Robert was at the Chicago Tribune’s radio station WGN and he hosted Hughes for a broadcast hour.
Robert Doyle served as the Time Shanghai bureau chief in 1948. One of the last evacuees from Nanking, he then established a bureau office in Hong Kong. He was killed in Java in April of 1950, and Hughes’ was the first cable to arrive in Hong Kong for Ann. "Two Americans Are Found Slain On Jeep Journey in Central Java; One Victim Is R.J. Doyle of Time Magazine The Other Is Believed to Be Professor Raymond Kennedy of Yale" THE NEW YORK TIMES April 29, 1950, Page 3.


The Troutbeck Press was owned by Joel Elias Spigarn (1875-1939) and his wife Amy. Joel served as the Chair of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1914 to 1919 and the President of the NAACP from 1930 to 1939. The couple's home, Troutbeck, in Armenia New York, welcomed in civil rights leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells. The manor also served as a retreat and literary salon for authors like Langston Hughes, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. [Wikipedia] [Design Hotels]