Description:

Edison and Ramsaye Signed Ltd. 1st Ed. "A Million and One Nights", Superb Provenance

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931). Terry Ramsaye (1885-1954). A Million and One Nights. A History of the Motion Picture. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1926. One volume (of two). Signed limited first edition of one of the most important histories of cinema, one of only 327 copies of Volume I signed by Ramsaye and Edison, with dozens of illustrations.Thick octavo, original blue cloth, original acetate. Slight chipping to edges of acetate. "P-105 The Silent Days" stamped in green on front free endpaper. Book is near fine, with front inner paper hinge split. A handsome copy with an interesting provenance.

At a time when only Columbia University offered lectures on film, and when the Museum of Modern Art kept quiet plans for a film archive because it was considered "highly unusual to consider films as art or as a medium worth preserving," Terry Ramsaye spent five years researching this landmark two-volume film history (MoMA, 1984, 18). The "acknowledged...dean of film historians," Ramsaye also founded two newsreels, the Screen Telegram and Kinograms, and was an editor at Pathe News and The Motion Picture Herald (New York Times). Much of the first volume is devoted to Thomas Edison, specifically his "kinetograph" camera and "Black Maria," the structure he designed to rotate in alignment with the sun.

This is an unnumbered, out-of-series copy. This copy contains the bookplates of actress Ruth Gordon (1896-1985) and her husband, author, playwright, and director Garson Kanin (1912-1999), one dual-signed. 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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