Native Son.

WRIGHT, Richard .

Item Number: 136483

New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1940.

First edition, first issue binding with “A – P” on the copyright page. First issue green and yellow jacket, with price of $2.50 present and no blurbs on the spine. Octavo, original blue cloth, titles to upper board and spine in red and gray. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To– Ralph D. Hartman, “Freedom belongs to the strong…” Sincerely, Richard Wright 2/19/41 Brooklyn, N.Y.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. An exceptional inscription, rare and desirable.

Richard Wright's ground-breaking novel Native Son tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in utter poverty in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s. "The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. It made impossible a repetition of the old lies [and] brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture" (Irving Howe).