Eugene G. O’Neill
New York: Boni and Liveright, 1921.

First edition, first state binding, in the original pictorial jacket. The Emperor Jones was a watershed in American theatre, one of the first major Broadway productions to feature a Black actor in a leading dramatic role of such prominence, originally performed by Charles S. Gilpin and later by Paul Robeson in a role that helped establish his international stage reputation. A bold expressionist exploration of fear, power, and racial consciousness, the play remains a landmark text in both African-American theatrical history and the development of modern American drama. ATKINSON A 15-I-i.a. Also includes Diff’rent, a two-act study of sexual repression in a New England fishing village, and The Straw, a naturalistic drama drawn from O’Neill’s own experience in a tuberculosis sanatorium.