JOHNSON GEORGIA DOUGLAS The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems

Sale 2105 - Lot 245

Price Realized: $ 2,880

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000

HER RARE FIRST BOOK JOHNSON, GEORGIA DOUGLAS. The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems. Small, tall 8vo, original cloth-backed marbled paper-covered boards with title in gilt on the spine and upper cover; extremities lightly rubbed. Non-authorial presentation to "Edwin P. Booth April 26th 1920 from George A. Singleton." Robert Louis Stevenson postcard "The Value of a Friend" in a small envelope affixed to the front free end-paper. Boston: Cornhill Company, 1918

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

first edition of the poet's first book. Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966) was born in Atlanta Georgia. She attended Atlanta University where she met and married Henry Lincoln Johnson in 1896. After the couple moved to Washington D.C. Johnson began to write poetry in earnest. Unable to pursue a professional career because of her husband's insistence that she remain a housewife, Johnson instead conducted a remarkable literary salon in her home. There, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset and others came to talk and trade ideas. Her first poem was published in 1916. Between 1918 and 1930 Douglas published some 200 poems in newspapers and magazines and produced three volumes of poetry; Heart of a Woman, Bronze (1922) and Autumn Love Cycle (1928). She is considered by many to be the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance and the first African-American woman poet to gain prominence in the 20th century.