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. A very well preserved copy.

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'auraiséé incapable de produire cet étonnant morceau de litt√©rature 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.