Mandingo by Onstott, Kyle - [1957]

Richmond VA: Denlinger's. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. [1957]. First Edition. Hardcover. [good solid copy, faint soiling to page edges, some slight deterioration to binding at the spine ends (due more to cheap manufacture than anything); jacket shows light soiling, fading to spine, some wear and shallow chipping along top and bottom edges, internally repaired with brown paper tape at spine ends and fold-points, 1-1/2" slightly ragged tear at top of front panel, "Mandingo is a shocking book. It is an authentic book. It is a book to be reckoned with." The anti-Gone with the Wind, "an outstandingly different novel about the South," an expose of the evils of slavery that (per the jacket blurb) the author had been researching and stewing about since his childhood. The jacket copy recounts his memories of "first-hand, word-of-mouth stories told him by former slaves and former masters of slaves," as well as "old white men who smilingly remembered enjoying every dark-skinned woman and girl on their fathers' plantations," and his subsequent research, which involved interviews with "anyone and everyone who was still alive who remembered anything of the old plantation days." Made into a famously tasteless movie in 1975, with James Mason hamming it up as a whip-cracking plantation massa'. [NOTE that this book, though undated, is the first printing of the first edition; subsequent Denlinger's editions were stated as "second printing," "third printing," etc.] .