Item #17031 The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION. Hamilton Holt, Edwin E. Slosson, Intro.
The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION
The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION
The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION
The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION
The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION
The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION
The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION
The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION
The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION
The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION

The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves FIRST EDITION

New York: James Pott & Company, 1906.

First Edition. Hardcover. This landmark American anthology is the work of Hamilton Holt (1872–1951), long-tenured publisher of the progressive and internationalist magazine The Independent and vocal advocate for social reform, immigrant rights, and international peace, and later a founding member of the NAACP, an executive member of the League to Enforce Peace, and the first Director of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. From 1902 to 1906, Holt printed a series of "lifelets," or mini-autobiographies, sharing the lives of diverse working-class Americans, and out of the 75 he published in The Independent, he selected 16 for publication in this 1906 first edition of The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, As Told by Themselves (the entire 75 would later be published in an edition by Routledge in 2000). These "Undistinguished Americans" tell their stories of both the challenge and the promise of life in the United States at the turn of the century—of immigration, exploitation, racism, and prejudice (expressed not infrequently by the subjects themselves), as well as the pursuit of freedom, labor organizing, finding community, and making a home and family. The Americans recorded here include: a Lithuanian meatpacker in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle-era Chicago, a Midwestern farmer's wife who dreams of a literary career, a Mohawk medicine man's son at a government residential school, a Black laborer's first-hand account of "The New Slavery" in Georgia, and what is believed to be the first autobiographical memoir of an "ordinary" Chinese-American, a laundry-owner in New York, joining a chorus of voices from fellow "Undistinguished Americans," which remain, ringing true across a century.

7 3/4" X 5 1/2". vii, 299pp. Presents nicely in protective archival jacket. Bound in blue ribbed cloth over boards, ruled in blind and titled and decorated with American eagle motif in gilt to upper board, with spine lettered in kind. Mild wear to binding, with small wrinkle to cloth at upper board, gentle bumping and rubbing to extremities, and lean to spine. Binding is firm and sound. Pages are clean and unmarked. Several leaves unopened. An overall well-preserved and handsome first printing of this landmark collection of American autobiography. Very good +. Item #17031

Price: $475.00

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