Fine Books & Manuscripts

BALDWIN, James (1924–1987). Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son, presentation copy to Baldwin’s lifelong friend and editor. New York: The Dial Press, 1961. 8vo. Publisher’s cloth backed boards (some spotting or toning to endpapers), original unclipped dust jacket (light creasing to spine panel with few tiny chips to ends). INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO SOL STEIN on dedication page: “For Sol: –/In honor of the splendidly disputed passage./love,/Jimmy/god help us”. FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING of this collection of essays with topics ranging from race relations in the United States to the role of the writer in society. Provenance: from the estate of Baldwin’s friend and editor, Sol Stein. Stein began his lifelong association with James Baldwin when they were both editors of The Magpie; the literary magazine at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. In 1955, Stein would edit and publish Baldwin’s anthology of essays on the black experience titled “Notes of a Native Son”, later chronicling their literary relationship and brotherhood in “Native Sons: A Friendship That Created One of the Greatest Works of the Twentieth Century: Notes of a Native Son” (2004).