Mon ami Maigret

Name: Mon ami Maigret
SKU: 30629
Author: Georges Simenon

Tumacacori [Tucson, Arizona], February 1949.

177 leaves, recto, numbered 2 to 176, bound in 1 vol. (190 x 270 mm). Brown basane, blind-fillet decoration on covers, spine with raised bands, gilt title, chemise and slipcase.

The unique manuscript of the novel published in 1949 by Presses de la Cité, in the form of a typescript extensively corrected by the author.

The novel was typed directly, with no autograph manuscript preceding it: the result is a document of great interest, dotted with numerous autograph corrections in blue ink (deleted words crossed out in blue ink or thick blue pencil), followed by corrections in another hand in red ink or blue ballpoint pen.

It is signed and dated “le 2 février 1949” at Tumacacori, near Tucson, in the heart of Arizona. It is the last novel written there, nearly 9,000 km from the island of Porquerolles, where the action takes place: a singular case — revolving around the world of art and art forgery — for Commissaire Maigret, assisted by a British colleague, Mr. Pyke, a Scotland Yard officer curious about his famous methods. The two policemen leave Paris for the Mediterranean and, thanks to the testimony of several island residents, gather the elements that will allow them to shed light on the crime.

Porquerolles was a place Simenon knew well: Georges Simenon and Tigy discovered it in May 1926 and spent five months in a cabin at Grand Langoustier, a place that would inspire Simenon’s 1931 story of the same name, Le Grand Langoustier. After a further stay in 1934, Simenon returned briefly to the island in 1941 and sought, during the Occupation, to move his personal effects there. It was his gardener, Angelo Brandis, who carried out this operation in January 1944, while the island was deserted by its inhabitants on orders of the German occupying forces. Simenon returned one last time in 1955 to his “ideal island,” which served as the setting for several novels, including Le Cercle des Mahé. Tigy was buried there; their son Marc Simenon (born 1939) joined her there in 1999.

Provenance: Collection J.-M.B. (Sotheby’s, June 24, 2003); Aristophil, 17 (Drouot, April 3, 2019).

Pierre Deligny and Claude Menguy, Simenon de Porquerolles. Cinq séjours dans « une île idéale », 2003; Maurice Piron, Michel Lemoine, L’Univers de Simenon, guide des romans et nouvelles de Georges Simenon, Presses de la Cité, 1983, pp. 314–315; Menguy, 152.

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