Item #140941732 The Sweet Flypaper of Life. Langston Hughes, Roy DeCarava, Photographs.
The Sweet Flypaper of Life
The Sweet Flypaper of Life
The Sweet Flypaper of Life

The Sweet Flypaper of Life

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955.

First edition, first printing. Hardcover issue bound in publisher's original black paper-covered boards over white cloth spine lettered in black. Near Fine with ding to top edge of upper board, toning and musty odor to pages. In a Very Good+ dust jacket with price blacked out and a small crossed-out marking nearby, toning, light soiling, light edge wear and a light stain down the front spine joint. A nice survival of this fragile jacket.

DeCarava had won a 1953 Guggenheim Fellowship to photograph African American life in Harlem. It was a chance meeting on a Manhattan street corner in which DeCarava showed his photographs to Hughes. Hughes was so enamored with these photographs he immediately took them to his publisher, who agreed to publish them so long as Hughes wrote accompanying text. The result, a beautiful and vibrant visual encapsulation of life in 1950s Harlem, strung together with a textual narrative by a leading light of the Harlem Renaissance. Item #140941732

Price: $1,000.00