Going to Meet the Man.

BALDWIN, James.

$5,500.00

Item Number: 142797

New Yrok: The Dial Press, 1965.

First edition of Baldwin’s singular collection of short stories. Octavo, original half cloth. Signed by the author on the second free endpaper, “for Vince, with love. Jimmy 470 West End Ave N.Y.C.” The recipient, Vincent Harding  was an African-American reverend, historian, and scholar of various topics with a focus on American religion and society. A social activist, he was perhaps best known for his work with and writings about Martin Luther King Jr., whom Harding and Baldwin knew personally. Besides having authored numerous books such as There Is A River, Hope and History, and Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket, with the ownership signature of Vincent Harding on the front pastedown. Author photograph by Martha Holmes. An exceptional association linking two great activists and writers of the last half of the twentieth century.

"In 1965, at the height of his fame, Baldwin published his only volume of short stories to date," a collection that has made "substantive contributions to the African American literary canon" (Nelson, African American Autobiographies, 29). This volume of eight short fictions, together in print for the first time, contains Sonny's Blues, one of Baldwin's most popular stories, and The Previous Condition, "the first Baldwin story to be featured in a major publication, in Commentary in October 1948" (Early Novels and Stories, LOA, 965). By turns haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying--and informed throughout by Baldwin's uncanny knowledge of the wounds racism has left in both its victims and its perpetrators--Going to Meet the Man is a major work by one of our most important writers.