Gwendolyn Brooks

A signed first edition of Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks.

• Gwendolyn Brooks (American).
• New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949. 
• Octavo.
• 60 pages.
• Inscription on title page reading "For Dick, Sincerely Gwendolyn Brooks", dated 'October 29, 1991'.
• Contains a monochrome frontispiece and a loose blue "Pulitzer Prize Winner 1949" poster.
• Dark brown spine with aged white lettering, dust jacket is wrapped in a mylar covering, price is uncut.

Gwendolyn Brooks was born June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, but moved at six weeks to the South Side of Chicago as a part of the Great Migration. A born writer, Brooks was greatly encouraged to write by her mother, getting her first poem published at 13 and becoming a regular contributor to the black-run paper The Chicago Defender by age 18. Brooks would always feel her true home was Chicago, and her works have always focused on the black experience there.

Annie Allen released in 1949 and would be Brooks's second book of poetry, the first being A Street in Bronzeville released in 1945. It released to great critical acclaim, earning the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the Poetry magazine's Eunice Tietjens Prize the same year. The poems follow a young black girl, Annie, growing into womanhood in Bronzeville Chicago. The book is dominated by "The Anniad", a heroic poem written to mimic Virgil's "Annead", Annie's heroism coming from her survival against steep adversity. The book ends with Annie's outlook on the world she'd like to change.