Gallimard (1911 - )

PROUST Marcel A la recherche du temps perdu
Gallimard, Paris 1946-1947, 11.5 x 18 cm, 15 volumes in publisher's binding
New edition, one of the 2200 numbered copies on vellum toil.
The series is composed as follows: Du côté de chez Swann (2 volumes), À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (3 volumes), Le côté de Guermantes (2 volumes), Sodome et Gomorrhe (2 volumes), La Prisonnière (2 volumes), Albertine disparue (1 volumes), Le Temps retrouvé (2 volumes).
Publisher's boards bound after Paul Bonet's original specimen volume.
Pleasant overall despite the yellowed back on most of the volumes.

First edition, one of the numbered copies on vellum superior.
Bound in half blue heart shagreen corners, back with four nerves, paper plates with moire effect, guards and contreplats of handmade paper, preserved covers.
Our copy is enriched by an autograph dedication signed by Jean Marais which has been trimmed in the head and which includes a scratch on the word piece which remains legible: "I would have you, these two letters were cut off by the binder" play this piece and make you happy, my hands in yours, Jean Marais. "

First edition on current paper.
Back very slightly insolated without gravity.
Autograph dedication signed by André Frénaud to Jean-Marie Queneau.

Edition of the year of the original, mention of 70th edition.
Back slightly insolated, yellowed paper as generally.
Autograph tribute signed by Paul Morand on the first board: "At the edge of the earth Paul Morand."

New edition revised and expanded, one of the numbered copies on Alfa paper, only draw.
Nice copy.
Binding half shagreen green corners, smooth back slightly burnished, paper plates with moiré effect, guards and contreplats of handmade paper, preserved covers, speckled head.
Signed autograph of Jacques Prévert to Denise Bonde "... with the rare sun of April Spring 1952."

First edition, one of 80 numbered copies on pure thread paper, the only deluxe copies.
Handsome copy despite two slight sunning marks at head and foot of spine.

La Peste [The Plague]
Gallimard, Paris 1947, 12 x19 cm, original wrappers
First edition, an advance, service de presse copy.
A very good copy.
Autograph inscription signed by Albert Camus to the Surrealist Roland Tual.
Copies of this text with inscriptions are rare and sought-after. Gallery-owner, journalist, producer and literary critic, Roland Tual met Camus in 1943 at Gallimard, both of them going on to be members of the jury for the prestigious but short-lived prix de la Pléiade prize. It was at the final occasion that the prize was awarded that Camus gave him this handsome copy of his second novel.
A friend of Michel Leiris and Henri Kahnweiler, to whom he introduced André Masson, and later Juan Miro and Antonin Artaud, he took part with them in the Surrealist adventure from 1924 to 1929. André Breton himself was floored by the outstanding intelligence of this man who "trepaned the works of his contemporaries," and to whom the Pope of Surrealism apologized for not "understanding certain extraordinary things [that he said]".
An artist without works (except two films in 1941 and 1943 with Robert Desnos and Henri Jeanson), Roland Tual nonetheless exercised a major influence on a number of writers and artists of the avant-garde, serving as a sort of guardian angel for them. In Le Temps dévoré, Denise Tual records Aragon's opinion about this absence –and none could be more Surrealist – of a body of work by her husband: "Roland had such an elevated idea of literature (the sort he would have wished to leave behind) that he never had the courage to actually write, for fear of finding himself disappointing."