(LITERATURE AND POETRY.) DU BOIS, W. E. B. The Quest for the Silver Fleece. Frontispiece and three additional inserted sepia illustrations by H. S. de Lay. Large 8ve, original grey cloth pictorially stamped in blue and silver; title in silver on the spine; cloth slightly discolored. Chicago: McClurg, 1911
first edition of one of du bois' only two attempts at fiction. The complex story of Alwyn and Zora. 'Zora rises up as an uneducated field hand to a teacher in a private Negro school. Southern aristocracy is satirized and Northern profits in southern cotton supply the additional economic background. William Stanley Braithwaite compared it to Frank Norris' trilogy 'The Octopus'"--Whiteman, Century of Fiction by American Negroes.
