The Conquest; The Story of a Negro Pioneer. By The Pioneer

Lincoln, Neb: Woodruff Press, 1913. 1st ed. [so stated on copyright page]. Hardcover. Good. frontis (portrait), photos, 311p. Intense blue cloth with gilt lettering on backstrip and front cover. 20cm. Recased (new endpapers). Some bubbling/wrinkling of cloth on back cover. Ends of joints scuffed. Extremities rubbed (minor fraying at cover corners). Spine slightly sloped. Scattered marginal soiling on text-pages. No jacket. As with other copies we've had, the photo listed as facing page 251 actually faces page 240. The photo listed as facing page 241 (and usually found facing page 224) is not present. An unusual, but not unique, copy of the first edition of Micheaux's first novel since we have seen at least two other copies in this intense blue cloth with gilt lettering during our five decades of buying and selling unusual African Americana. All of the other copies of the first edition which we have owned owned (and almost all of those we've seen described) have been lettered in white and bound in shades of blue cloth. We find no evidence in our copy that the missing photo was ever pasted in at page 224 or elsewhere. The errors in placement of photographs in the first edition have long seemed mysterious. We believe that the most likely explanation is that this gold lettered cloth binding was probably a trial binding or the first state of the binding and that when, for some reason (perhaps cost or availability), the cover lettering was changed to white, someone noticed the missing the missing photo and arbitrarily inserted it facing page 224 instead of 241 since the other mislocated photo had was already inserted between pages 240/241. Of course, we have no confirmation for any of this but it does provide a reasonable explanation for the rare gilt lettering and the otherwise unexplained mysterious misplacement of two of the photos in copies of this book.