Nigger Heaven

NY: Knopf, 1926. Hardcover. Very good. Hardcover. First Edition. Bookplate on front pastedown, spine sunned with some minor fraying to the cloth at the head, light wear to the extremities, else a very good hardback bound in publisher's decorated brown cloth. Van Vechten’s unfortunately titled book remains one of those jagged, unquiet artifacts of American literary history—scandalous in its title, provocative in its intentions, and persistently debated ever since it first hit the shelves. A white aesthete immersed in the Harlem Renaissance, Van Vechten intended this roman à clef to celebrate the vitality of Black culture in Jazz Age New York, though many (truncated) contemporaries, including Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, viewed it with suspicion or outright disdain. (Inventory #: 66441)