Monsieur Lambert

Since creating Le Petit Nicolas in 1959 with his friend René Goscinny, Jean-Jacques Sempé published nearly one album a year. His first, Rien n’est simple (1961), had already set the tone. He then created Monsieur Lambert, an office employee who escapes his mediocre condition through daydreaming: every day he lunches at Chez Picard, a small neighborhood restaurant in Paris where office workers gather at noon to discuss football, politics, sex and office life. An everyman who casts himself as a playboy and invents passions for himself. This archetype, one of Sempé’s favorites, is drawn without malice: “It’s the absurdity of people, the poor things, somewhat lacking in every respect. Good people who, thanks to Monsieur Lambert, manage to lie to themselves, to invent wonderful love stories and make others believe them,” he told Le Monde in 1984.

Buoyed by this success, Françoise Giroud invited him to L’Express, where he contributed a drawing every week for ten years. His career was then firmly launched, leading to nearly a hundred covers for The New Yorker beginning in 1978. His first cover for the American magazine depicted an office worker ready to fly off from the window of his tower, amid the American megalopolis.

A fine copy in publisher’s boards, with the embossed image of Monsieur Lambert on the back cover.

Rare with a contemporary inscription.