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New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1940. First edition, first issue with "A - P" on the copyright page. Octavo, bound in full morocco by the Harcourt Bindery, gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt inner dentelles stamp-signed by the Harcourt Bindery, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. An exceptional presentation. Richard Wright's ground-breaking novel Native Son tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in utter poverty in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s. "The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. It made impossible a repetition of the old lies [and] brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture" (Irving Howe).

New York: Harpers, 1940. Hardcover. Near Fine/Near Fine. First edition, first issue dark blue binding. About fine with light bump at one corner and offsetting from a clipping, in a very good or better first issue dust jacket with some scuffs and small stains on the spine and rear panel. Housed in a custom quarter morocco and marbled papercovered boards clamshell case. This copy Inscribed to Ralph D. Hartman, president of the Cleveland Photographic Society and avid book collector, with his bookplate on the front pastedown: "To - Ralph D. Hartman 'Freedom belongs to the strong ... ' Sincerely, Richard Wright. 2/19/41 Brooklyn. N.Y." One of the handful of great classics of 20th Century fiction, increasingly difficult to find inscribed.