N.p. [Paris]: A Mes Depens, N.d. [1948]

16mo, pp. 101, unpaginated. Original printed pale blue wrappers, lettered in black to front panel. Grey text block. French text, facsimile page of manuscript to verso of title-page. Home-made contemporary dust jacket of decorated paper, clipped French bookseller's entry attached to rear flap. Handwritten letter in French laid in.

First edition. No. 36, one of 25 copies on Ingres Gris (another 25 copies were issued on Ingres Gris), of a total edition of 1550 copies. GERSHON LEGMAN'S COPY, WITH THE BOOK'S PUBLICATION DETAILS IN HIS HAND TO FRONT FLAP OF HOME-MADE DUST JACKET. ADDITIONAL PENCILLED DATE ('juiellet 1948') TO TITLE PAGE.

This story of the life of a French prostitute during the Second World War first appeared, in bowdlerised form, in the December 1947 edition of Jean-Paul Sartre's review Temps Modernes. This is the first appearance of the complete text, printed clandestinely in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, probably by Murater & Decker. At the time authorship was attributed to Simone de Beauvoir. She denied it -- but teasingly: 'J'aurais été incapable de produire cet étonnant morceau de littérature brute' (La Force de L'Age). When the first American edition appeared in 1966, it carried an introduction by Simone de Beauvoir.

Laid in to this copy is a 4pp. handwritten letter, in French, from an unidentified correspondent, and much exercised by the subject of banalité.

A fine copy, in the scarcest state, and with an excellent provenance.