La Dragonne
La Dragonne is the posthumous first edition of Alfred Jarry’s final novel, published in 1943 by Gallimard/N.R.F. with a preface by Jean Saltas. The book carries the tension of a text that long remained suspended between completion and fragment before taking printed form decades after Jarry’s death. It reveals Jarry’s late imaginative world through autobiographical echoes, Breton legend and Symbolist narrative structures. This copy is further distinguished by its green publisher’s decorated boards, designed after a model by Mario Prassinos, placing it within the bibliophile culture of NRF bindings. The combination of a posthumous Jarry text, an artist-designed binding and a numbered copy on Alfa Mousse gives the volume particular appeal. It is not an illustrated artist’s book in the strict sense, but an object in which literature, publishing history and binding design meet with unusual tact.
Quantity
Jarry, Alfred
La Dragonne
1943 | Paris | NRF
A numbered posthumous Jarry in green NRF boards after Mario Prassinos.
La Dragonne is the posthumous first edition of Alfred Jarry’s final novel, published in 1943 by Gallimard/N.R.F. with a preface by Jean Saltas. The book carries the tension of a text that long remained suspended between completion and fragment before taking printed form decades after Jarry’s death. It reveals Jarry’s late imaginative world through autobiographical echoes, Breton legend and Symbolist narrative structures. This copy is further distinguished by its green publisher’s decorated boards, designed after a model by Mario Prassinos, placing it within the bibliophile culture of NRF bindings. The combination of a posthumous Jarry text, an artist-designed binding and a numbered copy on Alfa Mousse gives the volume particular appeal. It is not an illustrated artist’s book in the strict sense, but an object in which literature, publishing history and binding design meet with unusual tact.
€280
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-8 (Octavo) approx. 20 × 26 cm
Edition Particulars
One of the numbered copies on Alfa Mousse.
Print Run
575
Copy Number
No. 207
Paper
Alfa Mousse
Inscription
No inscription
Product DETAIL
The novel centres on Jeanne Parangeoux, a figure of uncertain origin whose fate is bound to family history, desire and mythic projection. Jarry worked on the book during the final years of his life; parts were written, reworked or dictated as his health declined. The narrative moves between Paris, Laval and an increasingly Breton imaginative landscape, where memory, lineage and legend interpenetrate. In its later sections, Paimpont-Brocéliande becomes a central setting, with echoes of the Grail, Merlin and a tragic search for origin and destiny. The text remained unfinished at Jarry’s death and was brought into publishable form partly through the intervention of his sister Charlotte. The result is not a tightly realistic novel but a late, hybrid Jarry work in which the personal, the fantastic and the symbolic constantly overlap.
Gracq, Julien
Au château d'Argol
Julien Gracq’s debut novel, issued by José Corti, sets a gothic castle on the Breton coast as the stage for a charged, almost dream-logic encounter between three figures. The prose is musical and image-rich, favouring symbolic landscapes and metaphysical weather. Born near Surrealism yet distinctly independent, the book establishes Gracq’s lucid enchantment from the start. For bibliophiles this is a key title: an early Corti publication, scarce in appealing condition, and the opening note of a major twentieth-century voice. Its limited print-run and initially slow reception add to the sense of discovery. This copy is on publisher’s stock.
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€610
Michaux, Henri
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*Ailleurs* is a keystone in Michaux’s imaginary ethnographies—an atlas of inner geographies, issued by NRF in 1948. Miguet’s sober bordeaux morocco binding matches the text’s clarity and restraint. With dry precision and wry humor, Michaux details peoples, rituals, and languages that are both alien and oddly familiar. The airy layout paces attention and thought. This copy belongs to the small head issue on vélin pur fil and is notably fresh. A book that relocates the reader in place—a cartography of the mind.
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€1,050
Bousquet, Joë
Traduit du silence. Proses
Traduit du silence. Proses is one of Joë Bousquet’s rare pre-war publications, issued in the poetic series of Les Cahiers du Journal des Poètes. Its title already contains the central paradox of the book: writing as if translated from silence, seclusion and inward intensity. This copy is notable for its deluxe issue on Featherweight fort, numbered with the crowned-heart device, but above all for its signed autograph inscription to Jeanne and James Ducellier. The Ducelliers were among Bousquet’s closest confidants in Carcassonne and belonged to the circle where literature, friendship and surrealism converged. This is therefore not merely an early and refined edition, but a tangible document of a personal and artistic network. The book connects Bousquet’s enclosed room with the broader surrealist constellation of Max Ernst, Paul Éluard, Yves Tanguy and Raymond Roussel.
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€250
Ribemont-Dessaignes, Georges
Ariane
A remarkable copy of *Ariane*, published in the *Les Cahiers Nouveaux* series, inscribed with a poetic and enigmatic message by Ribemont-Dessaignes to Jacques Matarasso. This deluxe Japan paper edition was elegantly rebound in 1994 by Georges Leroux, in a restrained style that echoes the work’s Dadaist spirit.
Book
€1,100
The Architecture of Absurdity: Alfred Jarry, Pataphysics and the Destructive Aesthetics of the Ubu Cycle
From schoolyard prank to cultural revolution: how Alfred Jarry created Père Ubu and the science of pataphysics, permanently transforming modern theater, literature, and philosophy.