Typhon

First edition of André Gide's French translation of Typhoon, completed in print on 25 June 1918 by the Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française, in the small blue-wrapper series devoted in particular to Gide's own works and translations. One of 300 numbered copies on Rives paper, the sole deluxe issue, this copy no. 250.

Half black morocco with bands, signed Creuzevault at the head of the front free endpaper. Smooth spine with longitudinal title, title and top edge in palladium. Original wrappers and spine preserved. Some rubbing to the boards and corners, with slight rubbing to the joints. A rare copy retaining the original blue colour of the wrappers.

The translation had appeared a few months earlier, in March 1918, in La Revue de Paris, before this first edition in book form. It grew out of a literary and personal relationship established several years earlier between Gide and Conrad. In July 1911, Agnes Tobin introduced Gide and Valery Larbaud to Conrad at Capel House; the meeting developed into a lasting friendship, accompanied by Gide's determination to help establish in France the work of a writer he deeply admired.

Typhoon became one of the earliest major expressions of that mediation. Gide sought not merely to transpose the English text but to recreate in French its tension, rhythm, and density, taking liberties with the letter of Conrad's prose that would later fuel a long critical debate. Translation thus became for Gide a writer's task in its own right, poised between fidelity, interpretation, and literary recreation.

This distinctive character helps explain the enduring reputation of the version. René Rapin later subjected its departures and achievements to close scrutiny; Sylvère Monod, after a detailed comparison with other French translations, described it as a “fascinating phenomenon in the history of twentieth-century French literature, as well as in the history of literary translation in general”. Its subsequent inclusion in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade and in the Folio bilingual edition of Typhoon/Typhon confirmed its status as a landmark in the French reception of Conrad.

The present copy combines the most desirable features of this first edition in book form: the deluxe issue on Rives paper, the remarkably well-preserved blue wrappers, and a signed Creuzevault binding. It thus preserves, in a particularly accomplished bibliophilic form, the first appearance in book form of one of André Gide's most celebrated translations and one of the works through which Conrad secured a lasting place in French literary culture.