Mar 21, 2013 - Sale 2308

Sale 2308 - Lot 298

Price Realized: $ 4,560
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,500 - $ 5,000
DU BOIS, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folks. Portrait frontispiece. Tall 8vo, original green cloth blocked in black; light rubbing to the extremities, with no loss of cloth. Chicago: McClurg, 1904
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

fourth edition, inscribed with a fine association. "To Miss Dora Cole with all good wished from W.E.B, N.G. and N.Y Du Bois, June 15, 1904." (Du Bois' underlining). An uncommon inscription indeed from the usually formal Du Bois, who includes his wife, Nina Gomer, as well as his daughter Nina Yolanda's names in the greeting.
In 1913, W.WE. B. Du Bois was involved in the New York Emancipation Exposition, conceived "to tell a continuous and complete story of fifty years of unusual progress among colored Americans." In fact Du Bois was at the center of the Exposition, and had conceived a pageant to be called "The People of Peoples and their Gifts to Men." The script was written by Du Bois, the music by Colonel Charles Young (from Du Bois' Wilberforce days.) and was choreographed by Dora Cole Norman, sister of composer Bob Cole. Cole, a noted vaudevillian, was a frequent collaborator with Rosamond and James Weldon Johnson and was once a part of Black Patti's troupe. The date of 1904 (before Dora Cole was married) indicates a long friendship with the Coles.