Zora Neale Hurston

HURSTON, Zora Neale (1891-1960). Mules and Men. Philadelphia and London: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1935.

First edition of an important collection of black American folklore. Hurston, novelist, anthropologist, and folklorist was an influential member of the Harlem Renaissance. Here she documents folktales (often recorded in the local dialect) from her home state of Florida as well as New Orleans, including descriptions of the origins and rituals of Voodoo and Hoodoo and its practitioners such as Marie Leveau. Championed by novelists such as Alice Walker, it is also hailed as an important contribution to the field of ethnography and critical race theory.

Octavo. Frontispiece, two plates and text illustrations by Miguel Covarrubias (two pages somewhat roughly opened). Original burnt orange pictorial cloth stamped in brown, burnt orange top edge (pencil stroke on front cover, slight tanning from dust-jacket turn-ins); original pictorial dust-jacket by Covarrubias (neat tears along hinges, small loss at head of spine). Provenance: Jackson Green (bookplate).