Works Progress Administration

A rare signed first edition, first printing of the WPA's tome on the U.S. capital city authored by the Federal Writers Project.

• Works Progress Administration (American).
• Federal Writers Project (American).
• Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. 
• Octavo.
• xxvi, 1140 pages.
• Includes two maps in rear pocket.
• Signed on verso of the front free endpaper by 26 members of the Federal Writers Project.
• Bound in black cloth with gold printed lettering on spine.

Singers include the founding director Henry Alsberg, assistant to the director George Cronyn, and assistant director Reed Harris. The remainder are presumed some of the writers or editors hired by the Federal Writers Project to research the book, including composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, anarchist Leonard Abbott, and author/editor Kathryn Coe Cordell. Other listed names include C. W. Foster, Donald C. Kline, J. Frank James, Howard S. Douglas, John C. Rogers, B. Foster Cooke, and Sterling A. Brown. An important piece of DC history, linking the leadership of the Federal Writers Project with some of its largely ignored and unrecorded writers and editors. Nowhere in the volume does it list the names of any individual contributors.