Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
ROBESON, Eslanda Goode. Paul Robeson: Negro. Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, 1930.
Price: US$35.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First English edition. Small quarto. 153pp. Illustrated with photographic plates. Faint owner name and date on the front fly, binding slightly cocked, boards bumped and rubbed through in several spots, page edges and first and last few pages foxed, very good only, lacking the dust jacket.
Seller: Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA, Gloucester City, NJ, U.S.A.
Robeson, Eslanda Goode. Paul Robson Negro. Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1930.
Price: US$50.88 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: 1930, 1st edition. Orange cloth age-marked. Gift inscription on the blank flyleaf. Frontisplate from a bust by Jacob Epstein. Head of backstrip slightly torn on rear hinge. Orange cloth a little marked. Some sporadic foxing. Eighty years ago, books on black Americans were uncommon. 153 pages.
Seller: Michael Moons Bookshop, PBFA, Whitehaven, CUMBR, United Kingdom
Eslanda Goode Robeson. Paul Robson. Victor Gollancz Ltd., London, 1930.
Price: US$90.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: beautifully written study by Paul Robeson's wife; he was a great American, actor, singer, activist, scholar, athlete, and a community leader with an extraordinary sense of justice; book is discolored with spots along page edges and on many of the first pages but is fully intact
Seller: Affordably Rare, Westport, CT, U.S.A.
Eslanda Goode ROBESON. Paul Robeson, Negro. London: Victor Gollancz, 1930.
Price: US$95.40 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Spine very faintly darkened. With the ownership inscription of Phyllis A. Woodward, Clifton (Phyllis Ada Woodward, 1892-1985); loosely inserted a postcard of Rembrandt's De twee negers (1661). Biographer of the singer/actor by his wife; at the time of publication they were both living in London.
Seller: James Fergusson Books & Manuscripts, London, United Kingdom
ROBESON, Eslanda Goode. Paul Robeson: Negro. Victor Gollancz, London, 1930.
Price: US$250.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 153 p. 24 cm. 16 b&w plates. Orange cloth wrapped in mylar (removed for photo). Some marks to cloth, moderate wear to extremities. Inscribed by the author on front free endpaper to Dora Kaufman in London, 1938. Occasional thumbing.
Seller: Attic Books (ABAC, ILAB), London, ON, Canada
Price: US$600.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First English edition. Octavo. 153pp. Illustrated throughout from black and white photographs. Bookplate of Reverend Canon A.W. Parsons on front pastedown, a few faint pencil marks in the text, moderate foxing on foredge, some stains and sunning on spine, about very good lacking the dustwrapper. Tipped onto the front fly is a one-page Typed Letter Signed by Eslanda Goode Robeson and dated February 24, (no year) to Parsons that reads: "Mr. Robeson has asked me to thank you for your kind letter, and for your very constructive interest in his work. I am enclosing your list, to which I have added a few, and checked those which Mr. Robeson considers important and typical. I do hope you and Mrs. Parsons will come back stage at Leicester, after the concert is over, and say hello to Mr. Robeson. He will be looking forward to it." A small handbill advertising Robeson's records, with several marked in pencil, is also laid-in. Written by his wife Eslanda and originally published in the U.S. by Harper & Brothers in 1930, *Paul Robeson: Negro* was the first biography of the legendary athlete, baritone, and actor of stage and screen. According to their son, Paul Robeson, Jr., to whom the book was dedicated, his father had no direct involvement in the book's writing, and was "deeply angered" by its depiction of him as a lazy, immature artist in need of guidance. Yet Robeson also credited Eslanda as the catalyst for his acting career, and certainly relied on her for guidance, as she was his business manager. Despite Paul's objections, the biography was well received, with W.E.B. Du Bois placing it in the "Must Read" category in the September 1930 issue of *The Crisis*, the official magazine of the NAACP. As indicated by the bookplate and letter, this copy belonged to a British priest who was interested in Robeson's recordings. The singer himself was the son of a Presbyterian minister and spirituals were a primary staple of his catalog. Robeson also had a special relationship with Great Britain. He had spent most of the 1930s making films there, and many of the selections in this brochure that he deemed "important and typical" were spirituals from those films, demonstrating both clear pride in his British output, and, likely an acknowledgment of Parsons' own citizenship. Noticeably, there are no checkmarks next to his two *Show Boat* recordings, among the most famous and celebrated in his body of work.
Seller: Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA, Gloucester City, NJ, U.S.A.
[Robeson, Paul]; Robeson, Eslanda Goode. Paul Robeson: Negro. Victor Gollancz, London, 1930.
Price: US$1250.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: First edition, first printing. Signed and warmly inscribed by the book's subject Paul Robeson to a former owner on the front free endpaper. Bound in publisher's original orange cloth with spine lettered in black; lacking the dust jacket. Good, cloth rubbed, soiled and stained, spine toned. Foxing to textblock edge, and sporadically and lightly to pages, pages toned. A biography of the singer, actor and political activist, written by his wife.
Seller: Burnside Rare Books, ABAA, Portland, OR, U.S.A.