VERCORS Pseudonym of Jean BRÜLLER. LE SILENCE... Lot 203

VERCORS [Pseudonym of Jean BRÜLLER]. LE SILENCE DE LA MER. Paris, Éditions de Minuit, February 20, 1942. In-12 red chagrin, spine ribbed, cold-bound, gilt author and title, spotted head, first cover retained (later binding); (1) f. "manifesto", 90 pages, (3) ff. ORIGINAL EDITION, first printing, recognizable by the mistake "déguingandé" in the fourth line of the first page of text. Of great typographical refinement, printed clandestinely by Oudeville at 350 copies, this edition is well completed with the manifesto of the Éditions de Minuit written by Pierre de Lescure, printed separately on free paper, here bound before the false title. A literary masterpiece, whose plot and style are of exemplary sobriety, Le Silence de la Mer became the emblematic text of the intellectual Resistance at the Liberation. Of an insignificant rarity (a part of the copies having been seized and destroyed by the Germans at the time of the crossing of the demarcation line), this work became today a quasi-mythical object of collection. ¶ Vignes, Bibliographie des Éditions de Minuit, n°1, pp. 52-53 - L'Intelligence en guerre, 21.