Miss Minerva's Vacation
Chicago: Reilly and Lee, 1939. First Edition. Octavo. Item #032580
333 pages. Besides a writer of humorous juvenile novels, the author was appointed to the Virginia State Board of Censors to make certain that movies were devoid of sex and also did not suggest any kind of racial mixing such as Oscar Michaux's films represented. In this book, the family has a black maid who sees a turtle walking across the kitchen floor. She is frightened thinking it is a large bug. "I was a cleanin' up those chilluns' rooms an' I seed sumpen the like er which I ain't never seed in no hotel room.". The dialect, while relatively accurate, was used to show how the maid was pleasant but clearly knew her place--to serve her white employers. Bound in red pictorial cloth lettered and decorated in black, spine lettering black, light wear and fading to head, previous owner's name and address, both inner hinges cracked through endpapers, apparently reglued and holding well, in unclipped pictorial dust jacket lettered and decorated in red, black and tan, spine faded, wear along the edges and corners with chipping to head and a few other small chips.
Price: $65.00