African Americana

8vo. Photographic portrait frontispiece. Original boards (rebacked, endpapers renewed, some staining).

FIRST EDITION OF McKAY'S FIRST BOOK, THE FIRST POEMS PUBLISHED IN JAMAICAN PATOIS. Born in Jamaica, McKay studied poetry with his brother, teacher Uriah Theophilus McKay, and Walter Jekyll, who would later encourage McKay to write poetry in Jamaican dialect. His Songs of Jamaica presented a celebratory view of peasant life and earned him an award and stipend from the Jamaican Institute of Arts and Sciences. He used the money to finance a trip to America and enrolled at the Tuskegee Institute before transferring and ultimately leaving school to go to New York. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. RARE: According to American Book Prices Current, only two copies of McKay's rare first work have appeared at auction in the last 45 years.