PASCAL, Ernest.

£750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Ragtime. First edition, published the following year in the US under the title The Virgin Flame. "Loyal, sensitive young musician" Michael Cardovan struggles to wrest the soul of America from the toils of Jazz. Plot includes a dramatic trial with a jury of "twelve ragtime men and true." On the jacket, in silhouette, a flapper persuades her young man to turn towards the saxophone of modernity, while he reaches out for the classical colonnades of the Academy. Pascal is best known as a screen-writer, sometime president of the Screen Writer's Guild, worked on the Rathbone and Bruce Hound and John Ford's Kipling adaptation Wee Willie Winkie with Shirley Temple. Book collector Alec Hamilton's copy, with his signature ink-stamp to the front free-endpaper. Decidedly uncommon.

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.