Pierre DRIEU LA ROCHELLE

First edition, an advance (service de presse) copy.
Covers and spine very skillfully repaired.
Handsome autograph inscription from Pierre Drieu La Rochelle to Henri Béraud.

Lettre autographe signée de Pierre Drieu la Rochelle. Une page à l'encre noire sur un feuillet. Traces de plis transversaux inhérentes à l'envoi.
L'écrivain offre une très belle analyse de ses vers inspirés du front, rassemblés sous le titre provocateur de Fond de cantine, paru en 1920. Il demande l'avis de la poétesse Renée de Brimont, petite nièce de Lamartine, qui publia également à la Nrf : "Merci Madame de la décision très fine de ces vers me coupent comme un regret. Que chacun se retire dans soi-même. Que puis-je espérer que vous pensez de ces rythmes militaires [...]".

Esthétique et rare lettre de Drieu la Rochelle.

First edition of Pierre Drieu la Rochelle's first book, one of 150 numbered copies on Hollande laid paper, the only deluxe copies.
Precious autograph inscription signed by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle : « to Charles Maurras this anxious testimony. Pierre Drieu la Rochelle ex. sergeant in the 146^th Infantry. October 1^st, 1917. »
Important testimony of the young Drieu la Rochelle's admiration – then in full intellectual development – for the « master of Martigues » to whom he sends this copy of his war poems composed in 1916 after being wounded at Verdun.
Demobilized and disillusioned by a war for which he had enlisted hoping to wash away the defeat of 1870, Drieu oscillates between Aragon's communism and Maurras's integral nationalism. Having discovered the latter in adolescence, he considers him from then on as one of his intellectual masters alongside Maurice Barrès, Rudyard Kipling and Friedrich Nietzsche. In November 1918, he would write to him: « It is you, it is your prudent thought that destroyed in me, around 1915 or 1916, my Germanic conception of joyful war. Having fought in the infantry during the first winter, I already knew all too well that war was not joyful... »
Glorifying Maurras as « the greatest political thinker of the last century » (Gilles), he is – like many young people of his generation – seduced by the patriotic aura as well as the taste for action and morality embodied by the leader of Action Française. Throughout the 1920s, the ambivalent Drieu will hesitate on which political path to take, before evolving toward fascism, definitively abandoning Maurrassian conservative ideology.

First and complete edition in 7 issues of this review founded and directed by Emmanuel Berl and Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, one of the rare copies on Madagascar paper of which no mention is made.

Bound in half red morocco-grained shagreen with corners, spine with five raised bands set with black fillets, some very light traces of rubbing on spine, date and place gilt at foot, marbled paper boards, endpapers and pastedowns of moiré-effect and gilt paper, top edge gilt, contemporary binding signed by Lagadec, elected best craftsman of France in 1927.

Manuscript signature of Emmanuel Berl at foot of the last page of the fifth issue.

First edition of this important and very rare magazine, complete with 4 issues in 3 volumes. 

Complete collection of this luxurious Surrealist magazine, edited and funded by Lise Deharme and characterized by its emphasis on photography. Covers illustrated by Man Ray, illustrations in black.

Contributions by Salvador Dali, Hans Arp, Dora Maar, Oscar Dominguez, Brassaï, Lee Miller, Jacques Lacan, James Joyce, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Ilarie Voronca, Nathalie Barney, Benjamin Fondane, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Alejo Carpentier, Eugène Jolas, Lise Hirtz [Lise Deharme], Raymond Queneau, Claude Sernet, Roger Vitrac, Robert Desnos, Jean Follain, Léon-Paul Fargue, Pierre Keffer, Jacques Baron, Gottried Benn, Céline Arnauld, Monny de Boully, Georgette Camille, André de Richaud, Jules Supervielle, Claire Goll, Paul Laforgue, David Herbert Lawrence, Marcel Jouhandeau, Paul Dermée, Jean Painlevé, Nadar, Pétrus Borel and Stendhal. Sunned spine on the No. 3/4 issue. Spine-ends and corners slightly rubbed, otherwise a wonderfully preserved copy. 

A very fine example of this rare avant-garde magazine, which "came into being over the course of a few dinners that brought together the dissidents of Surrealism and other poets in this hospitable abode [of Lise Deharme]. Robert Desnos provided the title. Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes was the editor. Man Ray had designed the cover: a silhouette of a lighthouse against a photographic background of sailing boats. [...] It contains curiosities: a tale by Petrus Borel, a photo by Nadar, popular songs, an investigation into the neurosis of war, epitaphs taken from a cemetery of animals. Among other curiosities, a sonnet by the famous psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. It is entitled Hiatus irrationalis." (Jacques Baron, Cahiers de l'Herne Raymond Queneau, p. 333).

First edition, one of 500 numbered copies on handmade laid paper, the only deluxe copies.
Covers marginally and slightly browned, handsome interior condition.
Provenance: from the library of André Rolland de Renéville.

First edition, one of 647 numbered copies on pur fil, the only large paper copies after 109 reimposed.

Contemporary half green morocco, spine with five raised bands, date in gilt at foot, patterned paper boards, green paper endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers and sunned spine preserved, top edge gilt, binding by Thomas Boichot.

Fine presentation inscription signed by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle to a pair of very close friends: "A Guillaume [et] Marcelle de Tarde ce Feu Follet qui en s'évanouissant emporte ma jeunesse votre amitié m'est précieuse et m'a fait beaucoup de bien \ Drieu." [To Guillaume and Marcelle de Tarde, this Will o' the Wisp which in vanishing carries away my youth, your friendship is precious to me and has done me much good].