Description: Franklin Library leather edition of Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," a Limited edition, one of the 100 GREATEST BOOKS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE series, Illustrated by Steven Stroud, published in 1980. Bound in burgundy leather, the book has light tan moire silk end leaves, a satin book marker, hubbed spine, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, gold gilding on three edges---in FINE condition. Ralph Waldo Ellison, who was born in 1914 in Oklahoma published "Invisible Man" in 1952. The novel traces the life of a young Negro trying to find himself as an individual as well as in relation to his race and society. As a scholarship student at a southern black college, the narrator gets a lesson in how the black is supposed to accommodate the white when in his junior year, he obliginly chauffeurs a visiting white trustee, showing him parts of the area the old New England gentlemen had never seen before---including a local saloon/brothel. Of course the college president is outraged stating: "Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie." The Opening lines are immortal: "I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids---and I might even he said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simple because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it as a though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. . . " "Invisible Man" is a fictional memoir written underground. The unnamed narrator, having literally stumbled into an old forgotten basement during a riot, has found this hole in the ground to be a comfortable home. He has settled in for hibernation, which he defines as "a covert preparation for a more overt action." It all began, the hero says, with his grandfather who on his deathbed advised: "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yesses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open." The novel won the 1952 National Book Award and is often listed as one of the five best African-American novels of all time. New York Times critic Wright Morris compared aspects of Ellison's work with those of Virgil, Dante, and Dostoevsky. 457 pages---a GORGEOUS book! I offer Combined shipping.
Price: 59.95 USD
Location: Walnut Ridge, Arkansas
End Time: 2025-01-12T23:12:47.000Z
Shipping Cost: 8 USD
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Item Specifics
Restocking Fee: No
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
Binding: Leather
Signed: No
Publisher: Franklin Library 100 American
Modified Item: No
Subject: Literature & Fiction
Year Printed: 1980
Original/Facsimile: Original
Language: English
Illustrator: Steven Stroud
Special Attributes: Luxury Edition
Region: South and New York City
Author: Ralph Ellison
Personalized: No
Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
Topic: African American Novel
Character Family: Invisible Man: Mr. Norton
