Two Firsts- Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sport of the Gods & Mortification of the Flesh

Description

The Sport of the Gods
, Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Publisher: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1902.  Pages 255.
In "The Sport of the Gods", first published in 1902, Dunbar examines the life of urban Black Americans. Forced to leave the South, a family falls apart amid the harsh realities of Northern inner city life in this examination of the forces that extinguish the dreams of African Americans. It remains a compelling commentary on the life of African-Americans after the abolition of slavery and landmark representation of black life in African-American literature.
Condition: The text block is very tight and extremely clean with just a couple smudges and two margin stains.  250 Very Clean pages.  The covers have some wear as seen in pictures posted here.
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"Lippincott's Magazine", August 1901.
Paul Laurence Dunbar short story-"The Mortification of the Flesh."
pages 250-256.
First Printing
. Very Rare. Condition: Good. wraps have some chipping and brittleness.
Written by Dunbar at the request of the editor of Lippincott's (Cunningham, 222), the "Ohio Pastorals" series includes five short stories that appeared in consecutive months from August to December in 1901: "The Mortification of the Flesh," "The Independence of Silas Bollender," "The White Counterpane," "The Minority Committee," and "The Visiting of Mother Danbury." Dunbar identifies neither the characters nor the settings of the stories in explicit racial terms. Rather, "Ohio Pastorals" are wonderful local color narratives about an Ohio village, featuring characters that Dunbar had included in other stories he had published in Lippincott's. The first two stories focus on two friends who reside in a small Ohio town and grapple with the politics of marriage, powerful women, male individualism, and provincialism. The third concerns a mother's attempts to cope with the potential loss of the son she struggled to raise and support to a woman ironically similar to her in strength and will. The fourth deals with the generational conflict between older and younger townsfolk over whether to purchase an organ to modernize hymnal accompaniment for church service. And the fifth story concentrates on two grandmothers disagreeing over how to care for their grandchild, who eventually dies of an illness. Several protagonists make cameo appearances in these five stories, creating a sense of narrative continuity despite the actual serial format. As a whole, the magazine stories potentially form the basis of a short story collection in the Ohioan local color tradition of his first novel, also first released in the magazine, The Uncalled.