CULBERTSON, Anne Virginia "Banjo Talks" [Bobbs-Merrill, 1905] Dialect Literature

"Banjo Talks" by Anne Virginia Culbertson [The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1905]. First edition. 171pp. Illustrated with 23 black-and-white photographs by Mary Morgan Keipp and Huestis Pratt Cook. Very Good- in original decorative green cloth with gilt, black, and white banjo motif. Rubbed along extremities; minor foxing throughout; puffy cat sticker affixed to the inside front cover; penciled gift inscription on front free endpaper.

A notable example of early 20th-century dialect literature, "Banjo Talks" presents Culbertson’s verse and prose in African American vernacular, paired with evocative period photographs. Intended as both tribute and entertainment, the book captures elements of Black Southern life as imagined through the lens of a white Appalachian writer.