Description

SPECIAL PRESENTATION ISSUE OF RAGTIME, INSCRIBED BY DOCTOROW

DOCTOROW, E.L. Ragtime. New York: Random House, (1975). Octavo, original cream cloth, original acetate dust jacket. 

Special presentation issue, one of 2000 unnumbered copies, of the first edition, inscribed by the author, “For Wayne & Carol, Best wishes, E.L. Doctorow.”

An “excellent novel, whose silhouettes and rags not only make fiction out of history but also reveal the fictions out of which history is made” (Books of the Century, 294). Doctorow’s bestseller “confronts and dissects” issues of ethnicity, race, sexuality and class in turn-of-the-20th-century America “with an unpatronizing use of historical hindsight and a full appreciation of their complexity” (Parker & Kermode, 490), weaving together his own characters with such now-legendary personalities as J.P. Morgan, Harry Houdini and Henry Ford. The novel received a National Book Critics Circle Award, and has been twice adapted: as a 1981 motion picture, directed by Milos Forman and starring then-81-year-old James Cagney; and as a popular and critically acclaimed 1998 Broadway musical. Published simultaneously with a signed limited edition of 150 copies. Bruccoli & Clark I:98.

Original acetate dust jacket near-fine with closed tear to front panel. Book fine. A desirable inscribed copy.