LEDUC, Violette; Simone de BEAUVOIR ( preface ). La Bâtarde.

LEDUC, Violette; Simone de BEAUVOIR ( preface ). La Bâtarde.France's Greatest Unknown Writer LEDUC, Violette; Simone de BEAUVOIR (preface). La Btarde. Paris: Gallimard. 1964. 8vo. Publishers wrappers printed in red and black; pp. 462, [2], first leaf blank; very minimal toning to spine and a few marks to upper wrapper; otherwise near fine; authorial inscription to half title Anne Germain, avec ma sympa trs attentive aprs un bon aprs midi Violette Leduc (see below). First edition of Leducs (19071972) memoir,

‘France's Greatest Unknown Writer’

LEDUC, Violette; Simone de BEAUVOIR (preface). La Bâtarde. Paris: Gallimard. 1964.

8vo. Publisher’s wrappers printed in red and black; pp. 462, [2], first leaf blank; very minimal toning to spine and a few marks to upper wrapper; otherwise near-fine; authorial inscription to half-title ‘à Anne Germain, avec ma sympa très attentive après un bon après-midi … Violette Leduc’ (see below).

First edition of Leduc’s (1907–1972) memoir, one of the boldest explorations of sex, queer desire, and the female experience in twentieth-century French literature, this copy intimately inscribed to the singer Anne Germain, affectionately thanking her for a pleasant afternoon.

‘A woman is descending into the most secret part of herself’, writes Simone de Beauvoir in her illuminating preface, ‘and telling us about all she finds there with an unflinching sincerity, as though there were no one listening’ (trans.). Leduc was de Beauvoir’s protégée, and they had met in 1945; through De Beauvoir’s efforts, Gallimard published Leduc’s first novel, L’Asphyxie. In the same year, De Beauvoir sent a letter to Leduc rejecting her sexual advances, describing it as ‘strange to find out that you are so precious to someone […] there is a mirage effect there which will certainly dissipate quickly’ (trans.). De Beauvoir frequently cited Leduc in her analysis of lesbianism contained within The Second Sex.

Leduc sought not provocation but precision: of the lesbian passages suppressed from her earlier novel Ravages, she explained that she was ‘trying to render as accurately as possible, as minutely as possible, the sensations felt in physical love […] not aiming for scandal but only to describe the woman’s experience with precision’ (trans.). After the success of La Bâtarde, Leduc planned to have a rival edition of the suppressed passages of Ravages published, at Genet’s suggestion, by Jean-Jacques Pauvert, publisher of the Story of O; Gaston Gallimard forced Leduc to cancel her contract with Pauvert and hastily brought out the work as Thérèse and Isabelle, albeit in a censored edition.

An immediate bestseller, La Bâtarde sold 170,000 copies within only a few months of publication and narrowly missed the Prix Goncourt.

Provenance: the Anne Germain to whom this copy was presented ‘après un bon après-midi’ is likely the French singer (1935–2016) of the same name, known for dubbing the singing voice of Catherine Deneuve in Les Demoiselles de Rochefort and Peau d'Âne. After studying under soprano Ninon Vallin, she became a member of the original lineup of the vocal jazz group The Swingle Singers in the early 1960s, and later worked as a backing vocalist for the likes of Charles Aznavour, Françoise Hardy, and Sylvie Vartan.

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