The Bluest Eye (First Edition, Hardcover)

Author: Toni Morrison
Publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Year: 1970
Pages: 164
ISBN: 978-0030850745

The first edition of Toni Morrison's groundbreaking debut novel, a work that established themes of race, identity, and trauma that would define her later writing. The book is instantly recognizable for its dust jacket, which sets the tone for the book, almost casually mentioning that the main character, a young girl, "was having her father's baby."

Published in 1970, while Morrison was working as the first black woman to be an editor for Random House, the novel follows eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove in 1940s Ohio, exploring themes of internalized racism and beauty standards that would influence discussions of representation for decades to come. Initially receiving modest attention, the book gained recognition through university courses and is now acknowledged as a significant work in Morrison's Nobel Prize-winning career.