Black Magic
London: William Heinemann, 1929. Illustrations by Aaron Douglas. First UK edition. Hardcover.
Decorative cloth cover with pasted label on the front and spine. Red endpapers with a booksellers label inside the front cover. Aaron Douglas was an American painter, illustrator, and visual arts educator. He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance and founded the Art Department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Lovecraft connection: Black Magic is the only known volume with black people as subject in H. P. Lovecraft’s library as referenced below, although this is the UK edition.
677. Morand, Paul (1888-1976). Black Magic. Translated from the French by Hamish Miles. Illustrated by Aaron Douglas. New York: Viking Press, 1929. vi, 218 pp. [MS/NUC 394:35]. On African Americans. Given to HPL by Henry S. Whitehead (HPL to Lillian D. Clark, 10 May 1931; LFF). ES 341
—S. T. Joshi & David E. Schultz, in Lovecraft’s Library: A Catalogue, Fourth Revised & Enlarged Edition
"Paul Morand was a Frenchman in diplomatic service; in 1925-1927 he visited the United States, including a tour of Harlem. Morand traveled though the Southern U.S. and the Caribbean. The result of these travels on Morand’s imagination was Magie Noire (1928), translated into English in 1929 as Black Magic. The book is a collection of stories or vignettes, grouped together geographically into three sections: U.S.A., Antilles, and Africa. The theme is black people—race informs every story, character, and setting. The stories are, somewhat like Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow (1895), not easy to qualify; some have distinct supernatural elements, many have reference to voodoo, with Morand drawing from William Seabrook’s book on Haitian Vodou The Magic Island (1929), and one is a long, speculative novelette that forecasts a possible black Communist future." - Bobby Derie, Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, Nov 7, 2020
Price: $45.00