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8vo. Original mimeographed proof copy. Plain stapled wrappers; glassine. Provenance: Albert Camus (1913-1960), French philosopher and author (annotations). 

FIRST EDITION, LIMITED ISSUE, number 57 of an unstated edition. According to Davis and Fabre, the edition comprised 100 copies, however, copies with numbers higher than 100 are known to exist, including a copy numbered 500 (though bibliographer Bill French notes, “it is doubtful that 500 copies were made”). Wright gave his biographer, Constance Webb, permission to publish the second part of Black Boy in a limited mimeographed edition.  The work comprises 125 pages of Wright’s text for the second part of Black Boy, followed by 25 pages of Webb’s notes.  Webb's biography was published in 1968.  American Hunger, the unexpurgated version of Black Boy, was not published until 1991.

There are 2 notations in ink: "Mr. Albert Camus" and "57"; and a pencil note, presumably in Camus' hand "1965 - Donee par Ellen Wright" (Richard Wright's widow). In 1946, Wright moved to Paris permanently, where he developed friendships with existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and absurdist Albert Camus. Their intellectual exchanges were highly influential during Wright's early French period, most profoundly realized in The Outsider. Davis & Fabre, pp.144-145. A SIGNIFICANT ASSOCIATION COPY.