HURSTON, Zora Neale (1891-1960). Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1937.

8vo. Original orange cloth lettered in black, top edge stained black, others uncut (very slight rubbing to a few corners, otherwise bright); in publisher's dust jacket (a few short creases and tears, cellotape remnant on front panel verso along portion of top edge, some staining, corners of front flap clipped).

FIRST EDITION IN THE RARE DUST JACKET of Hurston's best-known work, now considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance. When it was first published, mainstream reviews of Their Eyes Were Watching God were largely positive, despite the novel being largely denigrated by several leading Harlem Renaissance authors, including Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Alain Locke, and Otis Ferguson.

The novel was "rediscovered" in the 1970s and 1980s as universities across the country developed Black Studies programs. An essay by Alice Walker in the 1970s helped cement mainstream institutional support for Hurston's work. In 1975, professor Ruth Sheffey founded the Zora Neale Hurston Society at Morgan State University in Baltimore, which Hurston had attended when it was known as Morgan Academy in 1917. By 1978, Harper and Row leased the publishing rights to the novel to the University of Illinois Press, whose edition was so profitable that Harper and Row refused to renew the leasing contract, instead reprinting their own new edition, whose 75,000 copies sold out in less than a month.

Property from a Private Collection, Atlanta, Georgia

HURSTON, Zora Neale (1891-1960). Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1937.