Nancy Cunard was born to a British family of wealth and privilege, heir to the steamship line that bears her name. However, perhaps because of her dislike for the values her wealthy parents espoused, she devoted her life to causes of the less fortunate. After a brief marriage, she began a series of affairs with various men of letters, including Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. At that time (1920s), she began writing poetry of her own. In 1928, she fell for a black American jazz musician, Henry Crowder, who educated her to the realities of black life in America. Nancy took up the cause. In 1934, she edited Negro. An Anthology. It featured the writing of Jomo Kenyatta, W.E.B. DuBois, Samuel Beckett, Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, Theodore Dreiser and others. One thousand copies were printed, but it did not sell very well, and many were lost in a subsequent fire. Item 33 is one of those survivors. Ms. Cunard would go on to fight fascism, first aiding refugees from the Spanish Civil War, and later helping resistance groups during the Second World War. She gave away practically everything she had to others, and later ended up on the streets, her mind slipping into madness. She died in 1965, age 69, after being found unconscious and half-starved on the streets of Paris. $5,500.

You may find Thomas Goldwasser Rare Books on the internet at www.goldwasserbooks.com, telephone 415-292-4698, email mail@goldwasserbooks.com