LARSEN, Nella

Quicksand

First edition. Marie Laurencian-designed bookplate of Edward Wassermann on the front pastedown, boards are slightly bowed and lightly soiled, thus very good plus lacking the dustwrapper, but housed in a custom cloth clamshell case with leather spine label. Inscribed by the author in advance of publication: "For Eddie -- in memory of his parties. Nella. March 17, 1928." The first novel by Larsen, who was an active and engaged participant in the Harlem Renaissance. In 1929 she wrote her second and final novel, Passing and was awarded the Harmon Foundation's Bronze Medal (Wasserman was the only white man among her three sponsors). In 1930 she was the first African-American woman to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing. She traveled to Spain to write her third novel, but never completed it and returned to spend the last 30 years of her life as a nurse, the profession that she had trained for before her brief but intense writing career. Wassermann, a banker who had inherited part of the Seligman banking fortune, was one of the most prominent of the Harlem Renaissance-era party-givers. He became very close friends with Larsen and her husband, Dr. Elmer Imes, and at his parties she either met or became better acquainted with most of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance. The Davis biography: Nella Larsen: Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance (LSU, 1994) cites this copy and recounts the relationship between Larsen and Wasserman in some detail.

[BTC #25127]