The Fire Next Time.

BALDWIN, James.

$9,500.00

Item Number: 129331

New York: The Dial Press, 1963.

First edition of one of the most influential works on race relations published in the twentieth century. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by the author on the title page, “Peace! James Baldwin.” Very good in a very good dust jacket. Jacket design by Paul Bacon. Jacket photograph by Mottke Weissman. Rare and desirable. Housed in a custom clamshell box by the Harcourt Bindery. Founded over a century ago in 1900, The Harcourt Bindery is the oldest and largest traditional bindery in America exclusively devoted to fine traditional leather bookbinding by hand. Signed examples of The Fire Next Time are uncommon.

A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two "letters," written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as "sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle...all presented in searing, brilliant prose," The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of our literature.