Books

First edition, first printing, review copy, with publisher's slips laid in. Baldwin's second novel is a cornerstone of 20th-century gay fiction. Following the success of Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Baldwin won a Guggenheim grant to work on a new novel. His American publisher Knopf turned down the manuscript of Giovanni's Room for its homosexual themes, which they feared would alienate his existing audience. The work was picked up instead by the Dial Press, with whom Baldwin would publish regularly. When discussing Giovanni's Room in an interview with Richard Goldstein, Baldwin said, "if I hadn't written that book I would probably have had to stop writing altogether", and that he used it to clarify "where I was in the world... it's about what happens to you if you're afraid to love anybody" (Baldwin and Trope, pp. 51-52). Octavo. Original black quarter cloth, spine lettered in silver, green marbled paper sides. With dust jacket. Spine ends bumped, edges lightly foxed, toning to endpapers; jacket unclipped, mildly toned, but bright, spine ends chipped, extremities rubbed, a few short closed tears, front panel a little rubbed, else bright: a very good copy in like jacket. James Baldwin and Quincey Trope, The Last Interview and Other Conversations, 2014.

Giovanni's Room is a 1956 novel by James Baldwin. The book focuses on the events in the life of an American man living in Paris and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men in his life, particularly an Italian bartender named Giovanni whom he meets at a Parisian gay bar.