The Poetry of the Negro 1746-1949 by Hughes, Langston and Arna Bontemps - 1949

Garden City: Doubleday, ( 1949 ). Early printing. Hardcover. Very Good. Octavo; xviii, 429 pages, green cloth, inked name on endpaper "The common thread, of course, is the Negro's experience in the Western world. ... Poems by others are included only when they touch the subject directly, except in the case of the Caribbean countries, where a departure from this principle seemed necessary in a few areas in order to make representative selections." - Preface.

New York: Doubleday and Company, 1949. Hardcover. Good Plus/None. Octavo. Greyish-green cloth-covered board, ruled in red, with silver lettering. Some light spotting/staining to boards, and two, small, black magic-marker crossouts to title page and verso. A good solid reading copy of this important, fairly early anthology. Includes poems on "the Negro's experience in the Western world, Negro countries around the Caribbean...selections of representative poems without respect either to racial implications in the verses or to the identify of the poets. Interestingly, the editors included a section entitled: "Tributary Poems by Non-Negroes"