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Seven Long Times — Piri Thomas
Piri Thomas
Praeger Publishers · New York · 1974
First Edition · First Printing · Signed by Piri Thomas
The Book:
The first edition, first printing of Piri Thomas’s Seven Long Times, published by Praeger in 1974 and boldly signed by Thomas on the title page. In this deeply personal memoir, Thomas recounts the seven years he spent incarcerated in New York prisons, transforming his experience of confinement into a firsthand examination of violence, race, punishment, survival, and personal transformation. This signed copy retains its original red publisher’s cloth and original unclipped $7.95 dust jacket.
Condition:
Near Fine book in a Near Fine original dust jacket, with ex-library and ownership markings. The binding remains square and sound with bright red cloth and a clean interior, while the jacket shows only light surface rubbing and minimal handling wear. “J. Bland” is written along the lower text-block edge. No restoration is observed.
Story Of The Book
Prison reduces people to numbers, records, sentences, and crimes. Piri Thomas insisted on putting the person back into the story.
Thomas entered prison after a violent robbery and ultimately spent seven years incarcerated. Seven Long Times recounts those years from inside the institutions that confined him: their violence, racial divisions, routines, humiliations, friendships, and mechanisms of survival.
But Thomas refused both the official language of punishment and an easy story of victimhood. He wrote openly about the harm he had caused while examining what incarceration did to the people subjected to it.
The result is a prison narrative centered on human complexity—the insistence that accountability for a crime does not erase the humanity of the person who committed it.
Why It’s In The Collection
Seven Long Times belongs in Consigned to Darkness because it restores an individual voice to a system built around institutional categories.
Thomas writes from inside incarceration rather than describing it from the perspective of the institution. His testimony forces readers to encounter prison through the consciousness of the incarcerated person—including the contradictions, failures, violence, and capacity for change that official records cannot contain.
The signature makes this particular copy especially meaningful to the collection. The man whose experience gives the book its authority physically marked this first printing himself. In a collection concerned with witness and the recovery of individual voices from systems of power, Thomas’s signature creates a direct material connection between the testimony and the person who lived it.
Collection Categories: Witness Literature · Memoir & Testimony · Institutional Power · Civil Rights · Human Rights · Literature · Publication-Event Object · Imprisonment · Prison Writing · Signed
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Authentication Evidence
Title page is boldly signed by Piri Thomas in manuscript.
Title page identifies Seven Long Times by Piri Thomas and Praeger Publishers, New York.
Publication and copyright information correspond to the documented 1974 Praeger first edition.
No later-printing or subsequent-impression designation is present, consistent with first-printing status.
Original red publisher’s cloth binding with gilt spine lettering is present.
Original dust jacket is retained.
Dust jacket retains the original unclipped $7.95 publisher’s price.
Binding, jacket typography, publisher information, and physical construction correspond to documented first-edition copies.
The signature is consistent with documented examples of Thomas’s autograph and materially distinguishes this copy from unsigned first-printing examples; no third-party autograph certification has been performed.
Institutional markings identify the copy as formerly belonging to Highland Park Senior High School Library and subsequently discarded.
No evidence of rebinding, facsimile dust jacket, or restoration is observed.
Observable bibliographic evidence supports identification as a signed 1974 Praeger first edition, first printing.
Piri Thomas
Praeger Publishers · New York · 1974
First Edition · First Printing · Signed by Piri Thomas
The Book:
The first edition, first printing of Piri Thomas’s Seven Long Times, published by Praeger in 1974 and boldly signed by Thomas on the title page. In this deeply personal memoir, Thomas recounts the seven years he spent incarcerated in New York prisons, transforming his experience of confinement into a firsthand examination of violence, race, punishment, survival, and personal transformation. This signed copy retains its original red publisher’s cloth and original unclipped $7.95 dust jacket.
Condition:
Near Fine book in a Near Fine original dust jacket, with ex-library and ownership markings. The binding remains square and sound with bright red cloth and a clean interior, while the jacket shows only light surface rubbing and minimal handling wear. “J. Bland” is written along the lower text-block edge. No restoration is observed.
Story Of The Book
Prison reduces people to numbers, records, sentences, and crimes. Piri Thomas insisted on putting the person back into the story.
Thomas entered prison after a violent robbery and ultimately spent seven years incarcerated. Seven Long Times recounts those years from inside the institutions that confined him: their violence, racial divisions, routines, humiliations, friendships, and mechanisms of survival.
But Thomas refused both the official language of punishment and an easy story of victimhood. He wrote openly about the harm he had caused while examining what incarceration did to the people subjected to it.
The result is a prison narrative centered on human complexity—the insistence that accountability for a crime does not erase the humanity of the person who committed it.
Why It’s In The Collection
Seven Long Times belongs in Consigned to Darkness because it restores an individual voice to a system built around institutional categories.
Thomas writes from inside incarceration rather than describing it from the perspective of the institution. His testimony forces readers to encounter prison through the consciousness of the incarcerated person—including the contradictions, failures, violence, and capacity for change that official records cannot contain.
The signature makes this particular copy especially meaningful to the collection. The man whose experience gives the book its authority physically marked this first printing himself. In a collection concerned with witness and the recovery of individual voices from systems of power, Thomas’s signature creates a direct material connection between the testimony and the person who lived it.
Collection Categories: Witness Literature · Memoir & Testimony · Institutional Power · Civil Rights · Human Rights · Literature · Publication-Event Object · Imprisonment · Prison Writing · Signed
———
Authentication Evidence
Title page is boldly signed by Piri Thomas in manuscript.
Title page identifies Seven Long Times by Piri Thomas and Praeger Publishers, New York.
Publication and copyright information correspond to the documented 1974 Praeger first edition.
No later-printing or subsequent-impression designation is present, consistent with first-printing status.
Original red publisher’s cloth binding with gilt spine lettering is present.
Original dust jacket is retained.
Dust jacket retains the original unclipped $7.95 publisher’s price.
Binding, jacket typography, publisher information, and physical construction correspond to documented first-edition copies.
The signature is consistent with documented examples of Thomas’s autograph and materially distinguishes this copy from unsigned first-printing examples; no third-party autograph certification has been performed.
Institutional markings identify the copy as formerly belonging to Highland Park Senior High School Library and subsequently discarded.
No evidence of rebinding, facsimile dust jacket, or restoration is observed.
Observable bibliographic evidence supports identification as a signed 1974 Praeger first edition, first printing.