Moby Dick Traduit par Jean Giono, Lucien Jacques et Joan Smith

Moby Dick began appearing in Les Cahiers du Contadour in May 1938, starting with issue no. V and continuing through to the final issue, no. VIII, in February 1939. Contrary to what is commonly stated, this is by no means an offprint of the Cahiers du Contadour: only the general wrapper and a justification leaf (each copy numbered by Lucien Jacques, the driving force behind the Cahiers du Contadour) were specially produced, almost certainly in the spring of 1939, in order to bring together the four parts (V to VIII, already in continuous pagination) that together make up the complete text of Moby Dick, “recovered” from unsold copies of the Cahiers.

The declaration of war brought an abrupt end to the peaceful literary adventure of the Contadour and to the publication of the Cahiers bearing its name. These Cahiers have naturally become very rare, and rarer still is the volume assembled to bring together the complete set of parts making up Moby Dick under a general wrapper. “While the translation in the Cahiers remained a confidential enterprise, 400 copies (…) the edition was not put on sale immediately, but stored in a shepherd’s hut, where it was largely destroyed. It was replaced by the edition published by Gallimard in 1941, during the war.” (Correspondance Jean Giono – Lucien Jacques 1930–1961).