HUGHES, Langston (1901-1967), editor. Poems from Black Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1963.

8vo. Original grey cloth; publisher's dust jacket (some very slight rubbing and toning). Provenance: William P. and Alice D. Mahoney (presentation inscription); by descent to present owner.

FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY HUGHES TO THE MAHONEYS: “For Bill and Alice, remembering Accra – Sincerely, Langston. New York, 1963.”

When Langston Hughes arrived in Ghana (see lots 235 and 237), Bill and Alice Mahoney had only been there two weeks and had barely unpacked. For Hughes and Alice Mahoney, “it was a special moment. They had first met twenty-eight years before, in 1934, on the beach at Carmel, when he had lived there on the generous patronage of her uncle. She was celebrating her eleventh birthday, and he had given her a collapsible camp stool, bright red in color. ‘And here we were now, thirty years later, and in Ghana of all places,’ Alice Mahoney recalled. ‘Langston and I hugged and laughed and pretty soon we were talking about Uncle Noël and saying, ‘Isn’t this really great? Wouldn’t Uncle Noël have really loved it?’” (Rampersad, Life, Vol. II, p.355).


Fine African Americana from the Collections of Noël Sullivan & William P. and Alice D. Mahoney