Collection: French Literature in Translation

NY: Doubleday, 1965. Hardcover. 8vo. 183pp. Stated First Edition. Two-tone yellow and black boards, with gilt spine titles. NF/VG. A touch of shelfwear at spine ends, light dust soiling to top of textblock. In an unclipped $3.95 jacket with a 1/4" closed tear at top of... More

A charming English-language edition of Apollinaire's 1911 book of quatrains about the animal world, illustrated with the original Raoul Dufy woodcuts. Translated by Pepe Karmel; French text below the translations. Boston: David R. Godine, 1980. 12mo (7.25 x 5 in.); xi + 66pp.; thin brick-red... More

First English-language translation of this key Surrealist text, originally published in France in 1924. Translated by Frederick Brown. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970. First edition. Octavo, 9-1/8 x 6 in. 176pp. Decorative papered boards backed with blue cloth; gilt spine titles; dust jacket. Spine gilt... More

NY: Orion Press, 1964. Hardcover, 8vo. xxxv+241pp. First printing. Reddish-orange cloth boards with grey titles. Light wear at spine ends and tips, former owner's name and address inked neatly on front free end paper, else near fine. Unclipped "$6.00" jacket has two 1/2" closed tears with... More

NY: Herder and Herder, 1971. Translated by Ellen Fox, with a foreword by Edouard Roditi. First edition. Small 8vo; red cloth; gilt spine titles; dust jacket. xxii, 170pp. Light bleeding to board cloth from water exposure; tidemarks to textblock top and fore-edge; spotting to first... More

Boston / Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1975. First edition. Octavo (8.5 x 5.75 in.); xxxix + 375pp.; blue cloth boards. Light shelfwear at spine ends and top tips. Moderate sunning to cloth of spine; light sunning to perimeters of front board. Contents clean and... More

First English language edition of Breton's surrealist philosophy of love. Translated by Mary Ann Caws. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1987. First edition. Octavo, 7-3/4 x 5-5/8 in. xvii, 129pp. Purple cloth stamped in gilt on spine and front board; dust jacket. Former owner's... More

Inaugural volume of this important anthology series, an ambitious early venture by publisher John Calder, who later described New Writers as trying to "combine different kinds of literature, experimental or not, occasionally poetry, short stories, work in progress of extracts from work we liked, but... More

Neville Spearman, London, 1969. Hardcover. Small 8vo. 202pp. First edition. Translated from the French by Margaret Crosland. Textured red paper boards with gilt spine titles. Very light bumping at spine ends, a hint of dust soiling to bottom board edges, else very near fine. Unclipped... More

First American edition of this early novel by the French writer, as translated by Barbara Bray. Basis for the 1967 Tony Richardson film of the same name, starring Jeanne Moreau (pictured here on jacket cover). NY: Grove Press, [1967]. Octavo, 8-1/4 x 5-5/8 in. 318pp.... More

Scarce hardcover issue of this collection of four short novels by the celebrated French writer. Introduction by Germaine Brée. Translated by Sonia Pitt-Rivers and Irina Morduch; Richard Seaver, Anne Borchardt; and Anne Borchardt, respectively. NY: Grove Press, 1965. First edition. Duodecimo, 7-3/8 x 4-5/8 in.... More

First appearance of this translation of the satirical picaresque that consumed the final years of Flaubert's life, first published in France in 1881, the year after his death. Here translated by T W. Earp and G. W. Stonier, with an introduction by Lionel Trilling. NY:... More

Sharp first edition of the French philosopher's first book to appear in English translation: an abridged version of his 1961 doctoral thesis, which tracks the shifting conceptions of madness and reason from the Renaissance to the Modern Age. Informed by Foucault's own struggles with mental... More

An attractive second edition of one of the French author and Nobel Prize winner's earliest books  in English, based on a series of six lectures Gide delivered in 1922. Translator unacknowledged. Introduction by Arnold Bennett. NY: New Directions, 1949. Small octavo (7.5 x 5 in.);... More

Early English-language printing of the French writer's autobiography, an immediate best-seller praised by the likes of Genet and Camus, which details her numerous affairs with men and women, among them several members of the French literary elite. Translated by Derek Coltman, with a preface by... More

First printing of this collection in translation of writings by the French painter and poet. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007. First edition. Translated by Marc Lowenthal. Square octavo, 9-1/4 x 7-1/4 in. viii, 478pp., with bibliography. Oatmeal cloth boards, black spine titles; in dust... More

Sharp copy of the first American edition of the penultimate volume in Proust's long novel, originally published in France in 1925 under the title Albertine disparue. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. NY: Albert & Charles Boni, 1930. Octavo (5.25 x 7.5 in.); 379pp.; decorative... More

First American edition of the seventh and final volume of Proust's long novel, originally published in France in 1927, and here translated by Frederick A. Blossom. NY: Albert & Charles Boni, 1932. 402pp. Black boards stamped in brown and backed with brown cloth; black and... More

London: Gaberbocchus Press, 1958. First edition. Small octavo; 198pp.; yellow cloth, in dust jacket. Translated from the French by Barbara Wright, who has signed, dated, and briefly inscribed the base of the title page. The first English-language edition of Queneau’s OULIPO masterpiece, which consists of... More

First English-language appearance of this novel published (and "translated") pseudonymously in France in 1947; a satire set in Ireland during the 1916 Easter Rising. Translated from the French by Barbara Wright, with introduction by Valerie Caton. NY: New Directions, 1981. First (American) edition. Octavo (8... More

Reprint edition of Queneau's OULIPO masterpiece, as translated from the French by Barbara Wright. London: John Calder, 1979. Second English-language edition, following the Gaberbocchus first of 1958. Octavo, 8 x 5-1/4 in. 197pp. Blue textured-paper boards; silver spine lettering; dust jacket. Toning to certain signatures... More

Attractive first edition copy of this selection of entries from the French writer's journals; a title reissued in 2008 by Tin House Books. Edited and translated by Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget. NY: George Braziller, 1964. First edition. Octavo, 9.5 x 6.5 in. 254pp., with... More

NY: Grove, 1965. Hardcover. 12mo. 175pp. First edition. Full teal cloth with gilt spine titles. VG/VG+. Very light shelfwear at spine ends and tips. Some faint discolorations/soiling at tops of boards, with a touch of dust soiling to top of textblock. Unclipped "$3.95" jacket remains... More

A postmodern masterpiece by the French mathematician, poet, and Oulipo member, in which a writer, Roubaud, struggling in the wake of his wife's death, fails to write a novel, The Great Fire of London, and instead writes this, a novel/not-novel of digressions and asides, an... More

First American edition of the 1910 novel by the sui generis French writer, who exerted a strong influence on both the surrealists and the later OULIPO movement. Translated by Lindy Foord and Rayner Heppenstall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. First American edition. Octavo, 8-1/4... More