"MY BIGGEST BOOK TO DATE": FIRST EDITION OF THE LANGSTON HUGHES READER, WARMLY INSCRIBED BY HUGHES ON THE DAY OF PUBLICATION TO PHILANTHROPIST AND LIFELONG FRIEND AMY SPINGARN, WHOSE HUSBAND JOEL AND BROTHER-IN-LAW ARTHUR SERVED IN SUCCESSION AS PRESIDENTS OF THE NAACP

HUGHES, Langston. The Langston Hughes Reader. New York: George Braziller, 1958. Thick octavo, original half black cloth, original dust jacket. $3800.

First edition of Hughes' expansive volume highlighting decades of his finest work, presentation/association copy inscribed by him to his close friend and benefactor Amy Spingarn, wife of NAACP President Joel Spingarn and sister-in-law of Arthur Spingarn, who succeeded Joel as NAACP President. Hughes boldly inscribed this copy in his trademark green ink, "For Amy Spingarn, my biggest book to date, Sincerely Langston, Publication day, New York, April 7, 1958."

"Hughes is a titanic figure in 20th-century American literature… a powerful interpreter of the American experience" (Philadelphia Inquirer). The Langston Hughes Reader, highlighting his short stories, poems, lyrics, novels, plays and essays, as well as early autobiographies, covers "a body of work that epitomized the beauty and variety of African American and American experiences" (Introduction, Collected Poems, 3). On publication "Hughes leafed through the thick volume of selections from his work since 1921 with a genuine sense of amazement at the scope of his imagination… Well aware of the prestige involved in having a 'reader' appear in his own lifetime, he stirred himself to help in its publicity… But his rising popularity had revived his enemies. An article called Langston Hughes: Malevolent Force... declared 'The record of this writer is plain, for all to see. From the first, it was and is pro-Communist.' Specifically the author pointed to Braziller's thick Langston Hughes Reader… Most of the article, in fact, was a reprisal of the charges against Hughes as compiled up to 1953," when he was forced to testify and defend himself before a Joseph McCarthy hearing. That article and other attacks led to bomb threats on a promotional tour (Rampersad, Life Vol II:281). "First Edition" stated on copyright page. Blockson 5667. Bruccoli & Clark, 169. Philanthropist and civil rights activist Amy Spingarn was the wife of civil rights leader Joel Spingarn, who served as president of the NAACP (1930-39), and established the prestigious Spingarn Medal. Her brother-in law was attorney Arthur Spingarn, who succeeded his brother as NAACP president (1940-1966). Upon meeting Amy and Arthur Spingarn in 1925, close "emotional ties were formed between Hughes and the Spingarn family that lasted for the rest of their lives. As Hughes' pro-bono attorney and personal friend for more than 40 years, Arthur Spingarn made the poet's concerns his own… Amy became a secret benefactress of the poet and a source of enduring encouragement" (Berry, Langston Hughes, 67). Joel Spingarn was, as well, a co-founder of the publishing house, Harcourt Brace, and a friend and colleague of W.E.B. Du Bois, "their personal rapport transcended race… In his first autobiography, soon after Spingarn's death, Du Bois wrote, 'I do not think that any other white man ever touched me emotionally so closely as Joel Spingarn" (Ellis, Race, War and Surveillance, 143). At Arthur Spingarn's death in 1971, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall paid tribute, saying, "If it had not been for Arthur Spingarn, we would not have an N.A.A.C.P. today" (New York Times).

Only tiny closed tear to rear spine edge of colorful dust jacket. A fine presentation copy with an especially significant association.