Ragtime by Pascal Ernest, First Edition (1 results)

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. Octavo. Original blue cloth, title gilt to spine and front board, blue top-stain. With dust jacket. Title page with Colonial Edition overstamp, free endpapers browned, very good in slightly over-sized jacket, publisher's reprice label removed from the spine.