The Color of His Soul

Item Details

New York & London, Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1902

Narrow 12mo. 220 pp. Pictorial tile page. Decorative bookplate for Jerome A. Hart, publisher of the Argonaut, a San Francisco weekly and author of "The Golgonda Bonanza" and other western history books. Tan card covers with yapped edges and black design of trees in pots by J.K.B. (John Kennedy Bryans, Zoe's second husband, a cartoonist known for using the silhouette technique) on front and rear covers; TEG; deckled page edges. Some wear and soiling to covers & extremities; lacking slipcase; else a very good copy. This scarce first edition was withdrawn from the market just days after initial release when Zoe’s neighbor Courtenay Lemon, a charismatic Socialist orator and Djuna Barnes' future husband, threatened libel lawsuits. Funk & Wagnalls pulled the book—few copies survive.

Zoe Anderson Norris (1860–1914), known as “The Queen of Bohemia,” was an investigative journalist, publisher and advocate of the poor immigrants consigned to living in squalid Lower East Side New York City. Her own bi-monthly magazine, The East Side (1909-1914) documented desperate immigrant poverty in New York and called for the world to heed and help. In 'The Color of His Soul', Zoe's heroine, Dolly, a Southern writer, unmasks her Manhattan neighbor Cecil Mallon, a charismatic Socialist orator preaching sympathy for “wage slaves,” as a hypocrite and predator. His teenage mistress, a seamstress, dies in childbirth. (Grolier Club Exhibitions)

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