Bonjour Tristesse

Proof Copy. 12mo. Pp. [vi], 152. Pale green wraps, printed in black. Translated from the French by Irene Ash. Originally published by René Julliard, Paris, in 1954.

Scarce proof, published in the same year as the French original and a year before its British and American publications. Paper partially detached to backstrip (without loss), wraps lightly creased, else Very Good.

Winner of the 1954 Prix des Critiques. Taking its title from Paul Éluard's "À peine défiguré" ("Barely disfigured"), from his 1932 collection La Vie immédiate, Sagan's tale of adolescence and betrayal on the French Riviera was published when she was barely 19. In a milieu of bourgeois existential angst and boredom, its heroine – Cécile – transgresses the societal norms for women of the time and sets the pattern for many of the author's subsequent characters. François Mauriac, France's most respected novelist, hailed the talent of "ce charmant petit monstre" on the front page of Le Figaro. It became an instant succès de scandale and earned Sagan 500,000 francs and a papal denunciation. Within a year, 850,000 copies had been sold and the book was translated into some twenty languages.

In 1958, a film adaptation based on an Arthur Laurents screenplay was shot on location in Saint-Tropez by director Otto Preminger. It starred Jean Seberg, David Niven and Deborah Kerr, while Mylène Demongeot and Juliette Gréco both played themselves. Considered too racy for 1950s Britain, over 100 lines of a sexual nature were deleted for the English publication, and not reinserted until Heather Lloyd's 2013 translation for Penguin Classics. "Funny, thoroughly immoral and thoroughly French." –The Times