Mar 10, 2011 - Sale 2239

Sale 2239 - Lot 152

Price Realized: $ 2,880
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
THE SOUTH THROUGH THE EYES OF A SOUTHERNER (ART.) KENNON, SYKES. Kennon's South. Written, Drawn, Hand Carved, Type Set, Printed and Bound by Sykes Kennon. Illustrated throughout with full-page woodcuts and linocuts on heavy stock, interspersed with text on lighter stock. 4to, original red cloth-covered boards with the title stenciled on the upper cover; title-page and pastedowns printed on oilcloth. [Circa 1968]

Additional Details

first and only edition, one of 500 entirely hand-made copies. Inscribed, "This copy is presented to Dale Pass with the best wishes of Sykes Kennon, 30 October, 1968." We could find nothing about the author, but it is clear from the book itself that he is white, and was born in Oxford Mississippi and a WWII veteran. An extraordinary book, basically an explanation and critique of the South, as seen through the eyes of a white Southerner, who was opposed to Jim Crow. The woodcut illustrations address everything from slavery and local legends to the Klan and the modern civil rights movement. Some pages are printed on oilcloth, others on very heavy stock with an almost intaglio surface, while still others are printed on what seems to be cheap newsprint stock.