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First edition with all the features of first issue copies, one of 300 first issue copies on alfa satiné paper, numbered at the press and reserved for the author.
3/4 half red morocco binding, spine with five raised bands framed in black, gilt date at foot, marbled paper boards, marbled paper endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers and spine preserved, top edge gilt, elegant binding signed by Devauchelle.

Rare inscribed copy by Alain-Fournier to writer and journalist Jean de Pierrefeu: "To Jean de Pierrefeu with my admiration and sympathy. H. Alain-Fournier." (A Jean de Pierrefeu avec mon admiration et ma sympathie. H. Alain-Fournier).

A very surprising inscription to the editor-in-chief of L'Opinion who first offered to publish this novel in February 1913, through Henri Massis. The offer was ultimately redacted, after being rejected by the magazine's other editors. Thanks to his longtime friend Jacques Rivière, young Alain-Fournier managed to get a pre-first edition, serialized version of this novel published in the Revue de la Nrf. In the end, the small publishing house Emile-Paul agreed to issue the finished work in volume in September.
The immediate success of this masterpiece of 20th-century French literature must have somewhat ruffled the feathers of Jean de Pierrefeu, who wrote a bitter and ambivalent review: “I would have liked Alain Fournier to stop his story at the moment of his departure for Paris..., we would have been quite happy to accept that this slightly mad and fanciful tale should remain unexplained. ... but he wanted to weigh down his novel, which from then on turns out to be absurd, the characters become puppets... the dried-up skeleton of a love story to which one is not allowed to become seriously attached...”.
No doubt Pierrefeu wished to justify L'Opinion's failed offer of publication. Although in so doing, he was reflecting a general lack of understanding by literary critics - confused by the innovative double narrative structure of the novel. 

15 000 €

Réf : 86453

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