?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(LITERATURE.) Saleswoman's sample of "Twentieth Century Negro Literature," with subscriptions gathered by the agent. [80] printed leaves including dozens of illustrations (sample leaves from a 472-page book) plus 3 lined blank sheets for subscriptions, with one of those pages filled with manuscript subscriber names. Quarto, 9¼ x 7 inches, lacking backstrip, with detached boards (one ½ morocco and one gilt cloth); moderate wear to contents; agent's inscription on front pastedown. Toronto, Canada: J.L. Nichols, [1902], with subscriptions dated August-November 1910
Includes sales to the fathers of Paul Robeson and Count Basie.
Books produced for the African-American reading public were a fairly small niche market at the turn of the 20th century, and we have not seen a canvassing book like this, for a book marketed to a Black audience, circulated by a Black agent and filled in by Black subscribers. In the 19th and early 20th century, many books were published by subscription. Agents worked on commission, gathering commitments from potential buyers using special canvassing books with only a small sample of the book's text and illustrations, along with a sample binding. Gathering subscriptions was difficult, and the agent was on the hook if the subscriber later failed to pay.
This book was owned by agent Mary Elizabeth Jobes Parker (1845-1932) of Brooklyn, who signed the front pastedown. She was also active in the Sunday School at the Fleet Street A.M.E. Church in Brooklyn, according to her New York Age obituary of 29 October 1932. At the rear of the volume is a one-page list of 16 subscriber signatures, mostly gathered by her in Red Bank and Fair Haven, in Monmouth County on New Jersey's northern shore, plus one from inland Somerville, New Jersey. The most notable subscriber we have noted is the Rev. William Drew Robeson (1844-1918) of Somerville, who subscribed for a $2.75 cloth binding copy in October 1910. Perhaps the minister's 12-year-old son Paul Robeson answered the door when Mrs. Parker came knocking. Similarly, Harvey L. Basie was a coachman in Red Bank who subscribed on 5 November 1910; his six-year-old son William became known to history as Count Basie. Other subscribers left little mark on history; Julia Lucas and Charlotte Holmes were recorded in the 1910 census as mulatto laundresses in Red Bank, aged 25 and 45.
The book being sold was "Twentieth Century Negro Literature, or a Cyclopedia of Thought," edited by Dr. D.W. Culp. It boasted "100 biographical sketches of the most prominent Negroes of America," and claimed to be "the only book in which there is such a magnificent array of Negro talent." It was available in either cloth or half-morocco binding, demonstrated on either side of this sample volume. The book was originally published in 1902, but the subscriptions are dated 1910--possibly for a second edition, or perhaps Mrs. Parker was selling remainders. This title is not among the thousands catalogued in Arbour, "Canvassing Books, Sample Books, and Subscription Publisher's Ephemera in the Zinman Collection." It is a remarkable survival and a fascinating window into the distribution of literature to Black audiences.
