Collected Black Women’s Poetry
Complete Four-Volume Set
A complete first-printing set gathering nineteenth-century Black women’s poetry in four Oxford volumes, with a documented Black women’s ownership history.
Why this set matters
Edited by Joan R. Sherman for the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, these four volumes recover and preserve poetry by Black women writing across the nineteenth century.
The set makes a substantial body of work available together and documents the literary, political, spiritual, and community worlds Black women built through poetry.
Why this particular set
This is the complete matched 1988 Oxford University Press four-volume first printing, verified by the complete number lines. Its ownership history adds a second layer of significance: Black women preserving and carrying Black women’s writing across generations.
Edition details
- Title
- Collected Black Women’s Poetry, Volumes 1–4
- Editor
- Joan R. Sherman
- General editor
- Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press, New York
- Publication
- 1988
- Edition
- First printings, verified number lines
- Series
- Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers
- Format
- Pocket-size hardcover set; issued without dust jackets
- Pagination
- Volume 1: 480 pages; Volume 2: 464 pages; Volume 3: 384 pages; Volume 4: 384 pages
- Set ISBN
- 0-19-505267-6 · 9780195052671
- Inventory
- AKOMA-RB-0032
Condition
Very Good. The four pocket-size hardcovers show light surface and handling wear. There is no odor, internal marking, or repair. The set was issued without dust jackets. Adelaide E. Simms’s ownership label is retained as provenance, not treated as a defect. The photographs form part of the condition description and show the exact set offered.
Provenance
From the Janice Taheera Harper Collection; previously owned by Adelaide E. Simms, a friend and travel companion of Black labor organizer, Pan-Africanist, and internationalist Vicki Garvin. Harper was a Brooklyn educator and literacy scholar whose work centered African American children’s literature and literacy development.
About Janice Taheera Harper · Provenance and Intellectual Lineage
Research note
Akoma examined the physical set and reviewed edition, condition, and ownership evidence before setting the asking price. The public description reflects the specific complete set offered.