Gallimard

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, one of the numbered copies on vellum, the only printing.
Publisher's binding executed after the original design by Paul Bonet.
Rich iconography.
Handsome copy complete with its illustrated dust jacket.
Precious autograph inscription signed by André Malraux: "Pour Georges Bataille André Malraux."

First edition in French, a Service de Presse (advance) copy.

Spine sunned with dampstains, pale dampstain to right margin of front board.

Autograph inscription signed by the translator Maurice Edgar Coindreau to Pierre Ripault.

First edition on ordinary paper, bearing the correct imprint dated 6 May 1959, with the false statement of second edition.
Spine very slightly sunned.
Signed and inscribed by Eugène Ionesco to the stage director, playwright, and writer Simone Benmussa on the half-title.

First edition on ordinary paper.
Handsome copy.
Autograph inscription signed by Patrick Modiano to the stage director, playwright and writer Simone Benmussa and her companion the actress Erika Kralik.
Literary advisor to the Compagnie Jean-Louis Barrault - Madeleine Renaud, then, in 1957, editor-in-chief of the Cahiers Renaud-Barrault, Simone Benmussa also directed, from the Odéon theatre, the cultural service and the Cahiers of the Renaud-Barrault company. She adapted for the theatre works by her friend Nathalie Sarraute, Pierre Klossowski, Jean Cocteau, Gertrude Stein... She was the companion of the actress Erika Kralik.
 

First French edition, one of 77 numbered copies on pur fil, only deluxe issue.

Preface by Albert Camus.

Nice copy housed under a chemise and slipcase by Devauchelle.

First edition, one of 9 numbered copies on Japon, only deluxe issue aside from 35 copies on pur fil, and a few on colored paper.
Small restorations to spine-ends.
Illustrated with 20 photographs, including 7 photographs by Man Ray, 4 by Brassaï, one each by Dora Maar, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Rogi André, as well as artworks by Max Ernst, and the statue of a "female character" by Giacometti, in which the writer saw "the very emanation of the desire to love and to be loved in search of its real human object, in its painful ignorance".


 

First edition, one of 41 numbered copies on Hollande paper, from the deluxe issue.

Contemporary half black morocco binding, smooth spine, wood-effect paper boards, marbled paper endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers and spine preserved, top edge gilt, other edges untrimmed, binding signed L. Bergeron. 

A fine copy.

First edition on ordinary paper, with the false statement of “third edition,” complete with the errata bifolium.
Discreet repairs to the spine; a handsome copy as issued.
With a desirable signed presentation from Marcel Proust to the playwright Jacques Darval: “à Monsieur Jacques Darval / Hommage reconnaissant / Marcel Proust.” ["To Monsieur Jacques Darval / With grateful homage / Marcel Proust.”]
Darval, born Louis Valeton, authored several plays and numerous dance revues during the 1920s.