Poems (AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE). Nashville, Tennessee: A. M. E. Church Sunday School Union Publishing House, 1895.
First Edition. Printed For the Author. Original red cloth, gilt lettering and black decoration, octavo. Extremely rare first book by this African American author writing contemporarily with Paul Laurence Dunbar. McClellan was educated at Fisk University and was a Congregational minister who wrote poetry to raise extra money. This volume includes five prose works that are mostly autobiographical. "McClellan’s poetry, composed from the 1880s onward, shows a sensitive ear to meter and rhyme and addresses religion, nature, and romantic love while only occasionally revealing an emotional struggle against racial discrimination." (Poetry Foundation) Missed by Corrigan's Afro-American Fiction: A checklist 1853 - 1970. Bookplate of Charles Atwood Kofoid, an American zoologist known for his collection and classification of many new species of marine protozoans which established marine biology on a systematic basis. An attractive Near Fine firmly bound volume, spine modestly faded.
Price: $2,500.00