?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
Dumas, Henry (1934-1968) Two first editions.
1) Jonah & the Green Stone. New York: Random House, 1976. Octavo; edited by Eugene B. Redmond; bound in publisher's cloth-backed boards, lettered with light green metallic; in a vibrant unclipped dust jacket; 8 1/4 x 5 3/8 in.
2) Rope of Wind. New York: Random House, 1979. Octavo; also edited by Eugene B. Redmond; bound in publisher's maroon cloth-backed cream boards, stamped in metallic red, spine gilt-lettered; with a fine, unclipped dust jacket; 8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in. This copy is a duplicate from Yale University's James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts & Letters founded by Carl Van Vechten.
These posthumous publications are some of Dumas's very limited body of work to reach the public. His life and projects were abruptly ended in 1968, when he was killed by a New York City Transit Officer at the age of 33. Before his death, Dumas worked as an editor for the Hiram Poetry Review where some of his earliest works were published. His unfinished projects, like these two books, might have never seen light had Dumas's former professor Eugene B. Redmon not take action to become the executor of his estate upon his untimely death. A poet in his own right, Redmond compiled, edited, and published Dumas's works to the acclaim of authors Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Julius Lester, and others.
