NEKRASSOV - BOUND BY MIGUET

SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL.

Nekrassov. Pièce en huit tableaux.

Paris, Gallimard, (1956). 8vo. Bound uncut with the original wrappers, also the back-strip, in a beautiful elegant red morocco binding with red and black patterned paper to boards. Top-edge gilt. Title, author and year in gilt lettering to spine, the title vertically in large capitals. Inside of front board with a gilt super ex-libris. Binding signed at bottom of inside of front board: "C. et J-P. Miguet". Housed in a Black and red paper slip-case with red morocco edges. An excellent, near mint copy.

First edition in book form of the political play that Sartre himself called " "The Respectful Prostitute" on the level of politics" (Sartre, "France-Observateur", June 9, 1955), by other contemporaries called a "crypto-communist" work, or even worse "a farce in eight tableaus".

Hors commerce-copy (marked "H.C.") of the regular issue. The printing in book form was preceded by the appearance of it in "les Temps modernes, no. 114-15, 116, & 117, June-September of 1955.

"Nekrassov" is Sartre's response to the anti-communist sentiments found in the post-second world war era, personified in the American senator Joseph McCarthy. The play is a political comedy written in the form of a playwright that demonstrates the difficulty of maintaining personal freedom in a society obsessed with the threat of communism.

The well esteemed critic wrote in his review of Nekrassov: "[It] reveals him as the best comic talent of our times." Almost none of the contemporary reviews from the critics of the center and rightist press were favourable, though. "[A] certain grim rejoicing was apparent in the columns of these mourners as they celebrated the still-birth of "Nekrassov"." (Neal Oxenhandler, "Nekrassov and the Critics, in: Yale French Studies, No. 16, 1955, p.8).

Although "Nekrassov" has not been performed on the stage in Paris since 1955, in the literature to come, the play has achieved the role as one of the best pieces Sartre ever wrote.

Contat & Rybalka: 55/265 - b)

Order-nr.: 44578