Days of Grace by Arthur Ashe & Arnold Rampersad

Days of Grace (First Edition in Photographic Dust Jacket)

The Posthumous Memoir of Tennis Champion and Activist Arthur Ashe, Written with Arnold Rampersad

Bibliographic Specifications

• Title: Days of Grace: a memoir
• Authors: Arthur Ashe & Arnold Rampersad
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York
• Publication Date: 1993
• ISBN-13: 9780679423966
• ISBN-10: 0679423966
• Edition Details: First Edition. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1993.
• Binding: Publisher's brown paper-covered boards with black cloth spine, gilt AA/AR monogram to front board.
• Physical Format: Octavo hardcover, issued with a photographic dust jacket. No maps or plates.
• Language: English

Official Condition Report

• The Book: Very Good (VG)
• Exterior / Boards: The brown paper-covered boards and black cloth spine are clean and square, with a bright gilt AA/AR monogram to the front board. Very slight bumping is possible at the upper fore-edge corner. The spine is clean and intact.
• Interior: The text block is clean and tight, with creamy pages and no foxing. No markings are present on the pages examined.
• The Dust Jacket: Present. The photographic dust jacket shows light surface wear, scuffing and some marks and scratches to the front panel. There are no large tears, and the spine is clean and intact. It is protected in a durable archival-type plastic cover.

Synopsis & Historical Value

Days of Grace: A Memoir is the autobiography of Arthur Ashe, written with the biographer Arnold Rampersad and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1993. Ashe began the book in 1992 and it appeared after his death in February 1993, which gives the volume the weight of a final testament.

The narrative is not strictly chronological. It follows Ashe's years after his retirement from tennis, his coaching and philanthropic work, and his concern over graduation rates among Black athletes. It also covers his arrests at political protests and his anti-apartheid activism, and it closes with his diagnosis with HIV/AIDS and the illness that followed.

Ashe was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993. His anti-apartheid work gives the memoir a particular connection to South African history, and it will appeal to collectors of sporting biography and of apartheid-era engagement. This is a first edition of a widely read and well-reviewed memoir, in a collectible copy with its jacket.

Author Profile: Arthur Ashe & Arnold Rampersad

Arthur Ashe was a tennis champion who was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985 and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993. He announced his HIV/AIDS status on 8 April 1992 and died on 6 February 1993. His other books include Arthur Ashe: Portrait in Motion, his diary of the 1973-74 tennis season, and the posthumous Arthur Ashe On Tennis (1995).

Arnold Rampersad, born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1941, is a biographer, literary critic and academic, and Professor Emeritus at Stanford, having also taught at Princeton and Columbia. His other notable work includes Ralph Ellison: A Biography (Knopf, 2007), and he received the National Humanities Medal in 2010.