Bronze: A Book of Verse.
Johnson, Georgia Douglas. Bronze: A Book of Verse. With an Introduction by Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. Boston: B.J. Brimmer Company, 1922.
4to, [I-viii] 101 pp.; original tan paper wrappers with author, title, publisher’s device and name printed in black (identical to trade edition’s dust-jacket) with the addition of “The Subject for the Prizes Offered for the Three Best Essays submitted by students in English Attending Colleges and Institutions for the Training of Colored Youth / Competition Closes Dec., 10, 1922;” front panel with author and title above a roundel with a border listing African American poets – Wheatley, Washington, DuBois, Young, Moton, Burleaigh, Tanner, Dunbar – surrounding a portrait of the author in the profile; back panel blank; fine except for ¼” closed tear to top of back wrapper. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First Edition, “Competition Edition.” Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson (1877-1966) was an African American poet and playwright, and considered part of the Harlem Renaissance. However, she and her husband, Henry Lincoln Johnson, lived in Washington, DC and she lacked the opportunity for close connections with the journals in New York that might have furthered her career. Despite this, her first book, The Heart Of A Woman (1918), was warmly received. It explored themes meaningful to women: love, longing, loneliness and frustration with the strictures of proscribed women’s roles. She became the first widely recognized African American poet since Frances Harper. Bronze: A Book Of Verse, her second published volume, explores racial themes. The titles herein, “Prejudice,” “The Octaroon,” “The Passing of the Ex-Slave,” “To Richard R. Wright – Instructor,” “To Mary Church Terrell – Lecturer” are lyrical verse in traditional forms, focusing on emotions such as sadness and disappointment. Georgia Johnson wrote a number of plays. They are moving portrayals of the tragic impact of racism. Johnson’s mother was of Native American as well as African American ancestry. Her play, Blue-Eyed Black Boy, about an averted lynching because the victim is the son of the governor, is such a play. She was at the forefront of political and social events of her time. She and her husband opened their home to other writers and their “Saturday Nighter’s Club” was attended by writers such as Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Angelina Grimke, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Unfortunately most of her 28 plays were lost as her papers were not saved after her death.
B.J. Brimmer was the publishing house established by the young William Stanley Braithwaite and his wife, Josephine, (hence the “B” and “J” in the name). It was located on Brimmer Street in Boston. He wrote literary reviews for local papers, including the Boston Transcript, and drew attention to poets such as Robert Frost, Edwin Arlington Robinson and Amy Lowell, as well as African American writers such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson and Georgia Douglas Johnson. His anthologies and reviews were a significant contribution to the Harlem Renaissance and the American literary scene.
Black Women in America, pp. 640-642.
Oxford Companion to African American Literature, pp. 94-95.
Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the U.S. pp. 29-30, 447.
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