Description
For sale: a Rare and Exceptional first edition, second printing Paperback Edition of The Political Plays of Langston Hughes. Edited by Susan Duffy. First Edition unstated, 2000 Southern Illinois University Press. Second Printing with partial number line 4 3 2.
The exterior of the paperback edition is in Near Fine condition, with clean, lightly rubbed front cover with two partial creases, clean page blocks, no spine tilt, lightly rubbed spine ends, and mild edge and corner wear.
The interior of the book is in Near Fine condition with an erased price on the first free end paper. No other marks, inscriptions, or signs of ownership inside. The rear end paper and the interior pages are clean and bright, making it an excellent addition to any collection.
Among the most influential poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes is perhaps best remembered for the innovative use of jazz rhythms in his writing. While his poetry and essays received much public acclaim and scholarly attention, Hughes’ dramas are relatively unknown. Only five of the sixty-three plays Hughes scripted alone or collaboratively have been published (in 1963).
Published here, for the first time, are four of Hughes’ most poignant, poetic, and political dramas, Scottsboro Limited, Harvest (also known as Blood on the Fields), Angelo Herndon Jones, and De Organizer. Each play reflects Hughes’ remarkable professionalism as a playwright as well as his desire to dramatize the social history of the African American experience, especially in the context of the labor movements of the 1930s and their attempts to attract African American workers. Hughes himself counted prominent members of these leftist groups among his close friends and patrons; he formed a theater group with Whittaker Chambers, prompting an FBI investigation of Hughes and his writing in the 1930s.
Paperback volume ships promptly in a secure mailer with the book wrapped in both craft paper and bubble wrap.
