Georgia Nigger
London: Wishart and Company, 1933.
First British edition, first printing. [x], 241 pp. with 26 photos at rear, photo frontispiece of a bound African American boy. Bound in publisher's terracotta cloth lettered in red on the spine. Near Fine with light rubbing and soiling to cloth, slight bumping to two corners, and dust-soiling to upper edge of textblock. Small bookplate and contemporary newspaper clipping tipped to front free endpaper, offsetting onto following leaf. In a truly scarce Near Fine unclipped dust jacket with slightly darkened spine panel, light wear and soiling.
Muckraking journalist John L. Spivak's novelistic expose of the cycle of Southern debt peonage and imprisonment. The photo section at rear includes images of documents and of chain gang prisoners being subjected to various torments. An important pre-Civil Rights book that raised awareness of segregation's brutality during the Popular Front era. Spivak was a dedicated Communist and collaborator with the Soviet NKVD who would spend the early Cold War writing under pen names. This book was brought to modern audiences in 2012 by the University of South Carolina Press as Hard Times on a Southern Chain Gang.
Price: $6,000