Their Eyes Were Watching God.

HURSTON, Zora Neale [Hattie McDaniel].

Item Number: 139735

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1937.

First edition of Zora Neale Hurston’s most influential novel. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Hattie McDaniel A beautiful throne-angel on the right-hand side. Deeply reverent, Zora Neale Hurston.” The recipient, Hattie McDaniel was the first African American to win an Oscar for her memorable supporting role as ‘Mammy’ in David O. Selznick’s 1939 ten-time Academy Award-winning epic historical romance film Gone with the Wind. McDaniel was well on her way to reaching the pinnacle of acting career in Los Angeles when Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God was published in 1937. She had begun to attract attention and land larger film roles, yet was often criticized by members of the Black community for the roles she accepted (primarily those of house servants and maids) which did not challenge, but perpetuated damaging racial stereotypes and caricatures. Hurston, too, received criticism for Their Eyes Were Watching God from several leading Harlem Renaissance authors who denounced the work for propagating racial stereotypes, rather than participating in the movement’s mission to uplift and redefine Black identity. Richard Wright condemned her prose for being “… cloaked in that facile sensuality that has dogged Negro expression since the days of Phyllis Wheatley… Her characters eat and laugh and cry and work and kill; they swing like a pendulum eternally in that safe and narrow orbit in which America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears.” It was not until the 1970s that Hurston would achieve  a level of mainstream institutional support, particularly with the publication of Alice Walker’s essay, “Looking for Zora” in which she described how the Black community’s general rejection of Hurston was like “throwing away a genius.” Despite harsh criticism from their contemporaries, both Hurston and McDaniel endured and left lasting legacies as two of the foremost and only African American women in their fields. Hurston’s warm inscription to McDaniel refers to their common bond as daughters of Baptist preachers. From the library of Hattie McDaniel. Near fine in a very good price-clipped dust jacket. First editions of any of Hurston’s novels are rare, association copies in the original dust jacket are exceedingly so.

“And now, Zora Neale Hurston and her magical title: Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie’s story should not be re-told; it must be read. But as always thus far with this talented writer, setting and surprising flashes of contemporary folk lore are the main point. Her gift for poetic phrase, for rare dialect, and folk humor keep her flashing on the surface of her community and her characters and from diving down deep either to the inner psychology of characterization or to sharp analysis of the social background. It is folklore fiction at its best, which we gratefully accept as an overdue replacement for so much faulty local color fiction about Negroes. But when will the Negro novelist of maturity, who knows how to tell a story convincingly — which is Miss Hurston’s cradle gift, come to grips with motive fiction and social document fiction? Progressive southern fiction has already banished the legend of these entertaining pseudo-primitives whom the reading public still loves to laugh with, weap over and envy. Having gotten rid of condescension, let us now get over oversimplication!” (Alain Locke, Opportunity). “Whether or not there was ever a town in Florida inhabited and governed entirely by Negroes, you will have no difficulty believing in the Negro community which Zora Neale Hurston has either reconstructed or imagined in this novel. The town of Eatonville is as real in these pages as Jacksonville is in the pages of Rand McNally; and the lives of its people are rich, racy, and authentic” (George Stevens, The Saturday Review of Literature). "For me, Their eyes were watching God is one of the very greatest American novels of the 20th century. It is so lyrical it should be sentimental; it is so passionate it should be overwrought, but it is instead a rigorous, convincing and dazzling piece of prose, as emotionally satisfying as it is impressive. There is no novel I love more" (Zadie Smith).