Black Souls: A Play in Six Scenes.
Meyer, Annie Nathan. Black Souls A Play in Six Scenes. With a Foreword by John Haynes Holmes. New Bedford, Mass.: Reynolds Press, (1932).
8vo; printed red wrappers with red endpapers; first few pages show a small indentation at lower edge; covers worn with four abrasions; 3/4” faint damp stain and a dent to front cover; rubbing around spine; evidence of sticker removed (address label perhaps) from rear cover; about very good overall.
TOGETHER WITH:
Meyer, Annie Nathan. Black Souls A Play in Six Scenes. With a Foreword by John Haynes Holmes. New Bedford, Mass.: Reynolds Press, (1932).
8vo.; green cloth, stamped in gilt.
First edition. Inscribed at a preliminary leaf, Annie Nathan Meyer with instructions for return; additionally, at the title page, she has written, "Of course it can be brought to date if desired. It rece'd excellent reviews. They are in N.Y.C. Zora [Neale] Hurston said the best play on Negroes written by a white person." An accompanying note by Meyer suggests the existence of the clothbound edition. Laid in is a sheet of notepaper stamped “Oguinquit, Maine” (4-15/16 x 8”). This appears to continue the title page inscription: “One critic (knowing nothing about the subject) said it was far fetched. Yet almost the exact tragedy occurred in life of James Weldon Johnson. [Paragraph] He tells how he was saved from a mob & got off because the woman with him was found to have some [underlined] Negro blood.” Also laid in is a Holograph Postcard Signed. Ogunquit, Maine: to Jean Dalymple; Sept. 2, 1947. Meyer writes: “Am mailing copy Black Souls today registered. Sent you my last paper bound copy. It can easily be brought to date if you wish. It is laid after World War No. I. Thank you! Annie Nathan Meyer.”
The cloth bound edition is inscibed on the front endpaper: "Nocholas T. Rogers who is introduced to me by one of the smartest girls I know 'Beloved Kitty.' Annie Nathan Meyer. New York Nov 29, 1932."
Jean Dalymple (1902-1998), producer, public relations whiz and author, established the City Center of Music and Drama at West 55th Street in 1943. She envisioned producing all forms of theatrical entertainment at her Center; and, in essence, the City Center served as the model and inspiration of Lincoln Center. As a woman in a profession almost wholly male and as a producer who wished to bring together ballet, classical music, drama and Broadway musicals, she was a pioneer who cast a strong influence on American theater for over three decades.
Black Souls, perhaps her most serious effort, focuses on the lynching of blacks and hypocritical white attitudes toward racism. Meyer wrote the play in 1925, but it was another seven years before it appeared at the Provincetown playhouse under the direction of James Light and subsidized by Meyer. Zora Neale Hurston coached a choral group for the production. (Meyer had helped the nascent writer obtain scholarship funds to attend Columbia University and they remained friends.) As Meyer’s comments suggest, she had strong ties to James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston and other notable members of the Harlem Renaissance. (She had a deep interest in black culture and donated a collection on black literature and history to Hunter College.) This copy of one of her key plays, with mention of two of America’s most distinguished African-American writers, and addressed to a widely-respected and influential woman producer is significant.
American Woman Writers, Vol. 3, pp. 166-168.
“Jean Dalymple: The Life of the Theater, 1902-1998,” by Kevin Lewis, InTheater Magazine, p. 69.
NAW: The Modern Period, pp.473-474.
(#5941 A-B)
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