Description
Signed first edition of Fields of Wonder by Langston Hughes, with an inscription from Hughes to artist Suzal Weil.
Octavo, xiii, 115pp. Full green cloth, title in gilt on spine. No additional printings listed on copyright page. Solid text block, some toning to top and bottom edges. Faint offsetting to endpapers, occasional toning throughout, a very good example. In the publisher’s dust jacket, $2.50 retail price on front flap, archival tape reinforcement to top edge of spine, with worn edges and sunned spine. (Bruccoli & Clark 161) (Blockson 5248) Housed in a custom blue clamshell, title in gilt on curved morocco spine.
Inscribed by Langston Hughes on the front free endpaper: “To Suzal Weil – with the regard – of Langston Hughes. Black Mountain College, 2/8/49.”
An excellent association copy between two notable artists of the early 20th century.
This copy was given to notable female abstract expressionist Suzal Weil in the same month Hughes spoke at Black Mountain College. Weil studied under a number of artists at Black Mountain College from 1948-1949, including Robert Rauchenberg, whom she later married.
Fields of Wonder contains over 70 poems split into nine sections, written by Langston Hughes over the period of roughly twenty years. One of the most notable within this volume is “Border Line;” the poem Hughes chose to submit to the 1962 anthology Poet’s Choice.
