Books

Advance reading copy of the author's first novel, circulated in small numbers in February 1953, four months before publication. Advance copies were sent to Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, and Langston Hughes, among others. Baldwin's novel is a Bildungsroman based on his life as the adopted son of a Harlem preacher and his struggles with identity as a young African-American man. "In this autobiographical family novel, fourteen-year-old John Grimes undergoes an emotional-psychological-religious crisis of adolescence and is 'saved'. Go Tell It on the Mountain explores the histories and internal lives of John's stepfather Gabriel, mother Elizabeth, and Aunt Florence, spanning the years from 1875 to the depression and including 'the Great Migration' from the South to Harlem" (ANB). Octavo. Original illustrated wrappers. Neat ownership signature of "Adeline B. Homer", dated March 1953, to first blank. Wrappers remarkably bright, just a little rubbing and hint of silverfishing to spine, faint stain to rear wrapper. A near-fine copy.

Go Tell It on the Mountain is a semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin that examines the role of the Christian Church in the lives of African-Americans, both as a source of repression and moral hypocrisy and as a source of inspiration and community. It also details the social and psychological pressures that lead to the moral and spiritual decline of John Grimes, a teenage boy much like Baldwin himself.