One-Way Ticket. Illustrated by Jacob Lawrence.

HUGHES, Langston.

Published by New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949

About this Item

First edition, first printing, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "Happy Holidays to Marion - Sincerely, Langston, Christmas, New York, 1948". The recipient, Marion Palfi (1907-1978), was a photographer who fled to the US from Germany as a refugee during the Second World War. She befriended Hughes in Harlem shortly after her arrival, and he invited her to speak to his class at Atlanta University in 1947, where he was teaching his first semester as Visiting Professor of Creative Writing (see Rampersad, p. 128). Palfi photographed Harlem Renaissance writers throughout the 1940s: her portraits are featured in Arna Bontemps's who's who of Black America, We Have Tomorrow (1945), and several of her photographs of Hughes are held among the poet's papers at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Her photographs also featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1950, and she won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967. Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II, 1941-1967, 1988. Octavo. Original blue quarter cloth, spine lettered in bronze, yellow paper sides, front cover lettered and decorated in blind, top edge blue, fore edge untrimmed. With dust jacket. Lightly rubbed, hint of sunning to spine ends, contents slightly toned but clean; jacket unclipped, toned, head of front panel slightly creased, extremities lightly worn, splits to front folds discreetly repaired: a very good copy in very good jacket.

Seller Inventory # 174410

Bibliographic Details

• Title: One-Way Ticket. Illustrated by Jacob Lawrence.
• Publisher: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)