WASHINGTON, Booker T — UP FROM SLAVERY

New York. Doubleday, Page & Company. Early Edition. Original gilt-lettered red cloth. Frontispiece portrait of Washington. Classic turn-of-the-century autobiography, a testament to the virtues of hard work and unrelenting effort, by the successor to Frederick Douglass as the foremost American black leader of his time. Born a slave, Washington founded Tuskegee Institute, becoming its first president, at the age of 25. This copy of his best-known book is INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the front free endpaper to a prominent banker and book collector: "To/Mr. W. D. Vincent/with sincerest/regard of/Booker T. Washington/Dec. 3, 1913." Signed copies of this classic of African-American history are quite uncommon.. A small tear to bottom blank margin of one leaf; 1998 statement by a previous owner on the recto of the frontispiece stating the importance of the book on her grandfather; Vincent's bookplate on the front pastedown. Mild rubbing to the spine edges and tips with small frayed spot on spine edge and a few small frayed spots on rear cover with loss of cloth. Still Near Fine