Selected Gems of Poetry, Comedy and Drama
Boston: The Christopher Publishing House, 1931.
First edition, first printing. Signed Mercedes Gilbert and inscribed to a theater critic, referencing her current role in the first Broadway play with an all-Black cast, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Green Pastures. Bound in publisher's original rose cloth patterned in blind with titled stamped in gilt. Very Good+ with fading to spine, light soiling to cloth and light wear at spine ends. Discrete puncture to front cover neatly repaired at the front paste down indenting several early pages. Pages toned and several signatures just slightly exposed. Gilbert, who was often hailed as "America's greatest Negro dramatic actress" appeared in several films and stage productions, including the original touring production of The Green Pastures,, a 1950 Broadway version of Tobacco Road with an all-black cast, in Langston Hughes' play, The Mulatto,. In the early 1940s, she toured the country performing a one-woman show at historically black colleges, and voice-acted on radio shows, playing Sojourner Truth in a 1943 tribute to black women in America called Heroines in Bronze.
Sold