Presentation copy inscribed and signed by Hughes on the front free endpaper, "For Herman Livezey, these poems of Harlem, the sea, and elsewhere, Sincerely, Langston Hughes. At Walt Whitman's House, Camden, March 1, 1927." This was Hughes' first book, published in an edition of 1500 copies; the African-American poet was just 24 at the time. Affixed to the rear endpaper is a reproduction of a flyer, as pictured in the Saturday Evening Post, 21 Dec. 1940, which was distibruted in the Pasadena area, calling on "Christians" to "attend" (actually disrupt) a reading by Hughes, the "Distinguished Young Negro Poet," a member of "Moscow's International Union of Revolutionary Writers." The protesters picketed the hotel at which the reading was to be, and preventing Hughes from speaking.