LARDNER RING JR The Ecstasy of Owen Muir

Sale 2295 - Lot 139

Price Realized: $ 270

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

BLACKLISTED LARDNER, RING JR. The Ecstasy of Owen Muir. 8vo, publisher's gilt-lettered blue cloth, dust jacket, corners clipped, spine and folds slightly tanned, light edgewear to spine panel extremities. London: Cape, (1954)

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first british edition, with a 12-line inscription by lardner to an unknown recipient on front-free endpaper concerning the writing of this book in prison during his sentence for contempt of Congress stemming from his refusal to testify in the notorious Communist witch-hunt HUAC trials of the 1950s. One of the so-called "Hollywood Ten," Lardner served a one-year Federal Prison sentence rather than inform on friends and colleagues in Hollywood. He writes, "I began this book in the Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury, Ct., where I was serving a one-year term for contempt of Congress. Since I was also blacklisted in the entertainment business, I figured I should try a new line of work…" He then goes on to say that "the sales figures [from this novel] drove me right back to film writing, pseudonymously for another decade, then out in the open. Ring Lardner Jr. May, 1989." An interesting historical aside about the McCarthy Era by the Academy Award winning screenwriter of Woman of the Year (1942) who ultimately achieved a measure of redemption when he was also awarded an Academy Award for his work on Robert Altman's 1970 film MASH.