Strange Fruit

New American Library/Signet, 1944. First Paperback Edition. Paperback. Very Good+/in illustrated wraps. Vintage Paperback, First Thus 1944 New American Library (665) 260 pages. Very Good+, in illustrated wraps. Just a touch of shelf/edge wear and a tiny bit of laminate lift to the front panel. Tiny bump to spine bottom. Previous owner name on inside front cover. Cover illustration by Robert Jonas. Lillian Eugenia Smith (December 12, 1897 – September 28, 1966) was a writer and social critic of the Southern United States, known most prominently for her best-selling novel Strange Fruit (1944). A white woman who openly embraced controversial positions on matters of race and gender equality, she was a southern liberal unafraid to criticize segregation and work toward the dismantling of Jim Crow laws, at a time when such actions virtually guaranteed social ostracism. In 1944, she published the bestselling novel Strange Fruit, which dealt with the then-forbidden and controversial theme of interracial romance. After the book's release, the book was banned in Boston and Detroit for "lewdness" and crude language. Strange Fruit was also banned from being mailed through the U.S. Postal Service, with the ban against the book being lifted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after his wife Eleanor Roosevelt requested it of him. A very nice copy of the first paperback edition of this once banned book. Scarce vintage paperback. LOC SSS-32