A Street in Bronzeville

New York: Harper and Brothers, 1945. First edition. 57 pp. Black cloth, blocked in orange and lettered in gilt, with the dust jacket. Gilt a little dulled. Jacket slightly chipped at head and tail of spine, with a little browning to rear panel, but overall much nicer than usually seen. Brooks’ first collection of poetry, published when she was 28 years old. The poems are based on her own experiences and observations of daily life in the Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, where she spent most of her life. When Brooks submitted her poems to Harper, editor Elizabeth Lawrence asked Richard Wright to evaluate her work. (Harper had published Wright’s first two works of fiction, Uncle Tom’s Children and Native Son.) He said of them, “They are hard and real, right out of the central core of Black Belt Negro life in urban areas… Miss Brooks is real and so are her poems.”. (Inventory #: 2507)