4to. Title and headlines printed in brown. Original brown cloth-backed boards, printed paper label on spine, uncut (some light toning to spine). Provenance: Noël Sullivan (presentation inscription); by descent to present owner.

PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY HUGHES TO SULLIVAN: “Happy Holidays to Noël – Langston Christmas 1948.”

LIMITED EDITION, one of 500 unnumbered copies. Hughes visited Noël Sullivan at Hollow Hills in Carmel Valley in April of 1948; by July of that year, Hughes moved into 20 East 127th Street. At age 46, he finally had his own home, a place where he would stay for the rest of his life. At Christmas that year, “all was calm and bright…a mightily snowfall that whitened New York brought a measure of enchantment to his first Christmas in his new home. A deluge of gifts also arrived [from across the country]… Perhaps the most handsome of all, from Anderson and Ritchie, Cuba Libre: Poems by Nicolás Guillen” (Rampersad, Life, Vol. II, p.159). From his first home, he sent his patron and friend Noël Sullivan a copy of the work.