Paris, Gallimard, 1958.
8vo [217 x 139 mm.] of 359 pp., (9) pp. Preserved in its original wrappers, as it was published. Uncut.
Rare original edition of this autobiographical novel by Simone de Beauvoir, of which only 130 copies were printed.
Copy n°10, one of only 25 precious copies printed on vélin de Hollande Van Gelder, first paper.
“Collection of Memories published in 1958 by the French writer Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986). On the family album: a child of two and a half years, an infant in a cradle – Simone de Beauvoir and her sister, known as Poupette. The first years go smoothly in the comfort of an apartment on the Boulevard Raspail. But some reversals of fortune force the Beauvoir family to switch to another less spacious house, with more bitter plans for the future. Without any dowry, the girls must work to earn a living, and the father is irritated about what he considers as a disqualification. He reluctantly attends the triumphs of Simone in the path he himself has chosen for her. Cruel paradox and source of sorrow and rebellion, which turns away the wise student of the course Desire, the brilliant philosophy student from the bourgeois world which limits she sees. A hunger to know everything about the life she knows nothing about takes over the studious ‘Beaver’. At the Sorbonne, she met a young student, barely older than her, Jean-Paul Sartre. What kind of butterfly would the chrysalis of the Dutiful Daughter turn into?” (Dictionnaire des Œuvres, IV, 484).
In this first part of her autobiography, Simone de Beauvoir describes the first twenty years of her life, from 1908 to 1928, until she meets Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Her work exerted a strong influence on the course of French Literature” (Dictionnaire des auteurs, I, 259).
A superb copy, preserved in its original wrappers and uncut as it was published, as new.
