“IT IS NEVER RIGHT TO PLAY RAGTIME FAST”: LIMITED FIRST EDITION OF RAGTIME, SIGNED BY E.L. DOCTOROW, ONE OF ONLY 150 COPIES

DOCTOROW, E. L. Ragtime. New York: Random House, 1975. Octavo, original gilt-stamped ivory cloth, original slipcase. $750.

Signed limited first edition of Doctorow’s “highly original experiment in historical fiction” (New York Times), number 75 of only 150 copies signed by him.

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 the stories of 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, starring then-81-year-old James Cagney; and as a popular and critically acclaimed 1998 Broadway musical. Published along with a trade edition. As issued without dust jacket. Bruccoli & Clark I:98.

Mild toning to slipcase and book spine. A near-fine copy.