How to Charleston Correctly by Bemis Walker. Great Northern Publishing Company 1926. Staple bound Pamphlet. 31 pages. 7" x 5". There is some wear , mostly to the cover edges. Slight foxing? inside the front and back covers. The staples inside the book have rusted, and the center pages (pp 15-18, one sheet of paper) have come loose. There are some black spots, perhaps a powder, on the lower inner margins of pages 6-7. Otherwise, there are no previous owner markings. Pages and cover are flat without creases, folds or dog-earing. Not ex-library, not remaindered, not a facsimile reprint, not a reprint at all. Photos available on request. For sale by Jon Wobber, bookseller since 1978. BI21a
According to Wikipedia, "The Charleston is a dance named for the harbor city of Charleston, South Carolina. The rhythm was popularized in mainstream dance music in the United States by a 1923 tune called "The Charleston" by composer/pianist James P. Johnson which originated in the Broadway show Runnin' Wild[1] and became one of the most popular hits of the decade....The peak year for the Charleston as a dance by the public was mid-1926 to 1927"
This extremely scarce copy may be one of the first dissertations on how to dance this particular dance, just three years after it became part of the popular culture. This book has been reprinted, but what you are looking at is the real thing. F. Scott Fitzgerald did not own this copy, but he could have.