Item #4543 CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME; by Paul Laurence Dunbar / Illustrated with Photographs by the Hampton Institute Camera Club / and decorations by Margaret Armstrong. Paul Laurence Dunbar.
CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME; by Paul Laurence Dunbar / Illustrated with Photographs by the Hampton Institute Camera Club / and decorations by Margaret Armstrong
CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME; by Paul Laurence Dunbar / Illustrated with Photographs by the Hampton Institute Camera Club / and decorations by Margaret Armstrong
CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME; by Paul Laurence Dunbar / Illustrated with Photographs by the Hampton Institute Camera Club / and decorations by Margaret Armstrong
CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME; by Paul Laurence Dunbar / Illustrated with Photographs by the Hampton Institute Camera Club / and decorations by Margaret Armstrong
CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME; by Paul Laurence Dunbar / Illustrated with Photographs by the Hampton Institute Camera Club / and decorations by Margaret Armstrong
CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME; by Paul Laurence Dunbar / Illustrated with Photographs by the Hampton Institute Camera Club / and decorations by Margaret Armstrong
CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME; by Paul Laurence Dunbar / Illustrated with Photographs by the Hampton Institute Camera Club / and decorations by Margaret Armstrong

CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME; by Paul Laurence Dunbar / Illustrated with Photographs by the Hampton Institute Camera Club / and decorations by Margaret Armstrong

Dunbar, Paul Laurence

New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., October, 1901. B&W Photographs. First Edition. Decorated & gilt-stamped cloth. 8vo (8 3/4" x 6"), original publisher's decorative green cloth with Art Nouveau panel on front cover with beautifully stylized golden moon and nine tri-lobed white flowers; illustrated with warm photographs of black life by the Hampton Institute Camera Club: B&W photographic frontispiece and 45 half-tone plates (several full-page & others one-third page) within decorative borders by Margaret Armstong--facing Paul Dunbar's poetic interpretations; 127 pages. No dust jacket. Very Good / None. Item #4543

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 – 1906) was the son of two former Kentucky slaves (one being a father who managed to escape and joined the Union Army). Young Dunbar was raised and went to school in Dayton, Ohio. He became--almost uniquely in the dismal era of Reconstruction and Jim Crow--a black American poet, novelist, and playwright.

Known early in his development as the "elevator boy poet" of Dayton, Dunbar's career was helped by supportive local teachers, white critic William Dean Howells, and black social reformer Frederick Douglass. During a career that spanned a mere 13 years before he died from TB, Dunbar managed to travel widely yet wrote about 400 poems in addition to lyrics, novels and short stories. He used southern dialects to honestly represent his subjects.

This collection of his charming poetry and sensitive photographs is distinguished not only by warm-hearted sympathetic poetry in dialect about rural black life, but also by the unfoxed and very handsome B&W photographs by the Hampton Institute Camera Club that elevate the roles of black women and men.

See, in particular, the dissertation (& abstract) by Ray Saperstein, Out from behind the mask: the illustrated poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and photography at Hampton Institute.

Led principally by Leigh Richmond Miner and other progressive whites, the Hampton Institute Camera Club flourished from the 1890s through the 1920s. Saperstein's dissertation "reveals that the photographs in Dunbar’s works were created explicitly to reconceive pictorial representations of African Americans, and to subtly discredit any reductive conventional perception of racial character altogether. By depicting their subjects photographically, the members of the Hampton Camera Club sought to undermine essentialist characterizations--both derogatory and sentimental--by presenting their subjects as self-determining and multifaceted individuals." (Univ. of Texas dissert. abstract, on line).

Condition: tight, clean, quite bright volume with minimal wear; a delightfully designed Art Nouveau front cover with slight wear though retaining much of its color; plus superb B&W plates without foxing of rural black life. Very Light uniform age-toning. Light rubbing to the cloth and decorations. No entries by previous owners. Later state title page with green rather than red and back titles. BAL 4937.

Price: $345.00