Quand j’étais vieux
One of the first 100 copies on vergé d'Arches paper [announced as Alfa mousse in the limitation statement] (no. 37).
“In 1960, 1961, 1962, for personal reasons or reasons unknown to me, I felt old and began writing in notebooks. I was approaching sixty. I will soon be sixty-seven, and I have not felt old for a long time. I no longer feel the need to write in notebooks, and I have given my children the ones that remained unused,” wrote Simenon on December 24, 1969, at Epalinges. This is the first time the author reveals himself so personally, with a candor that is sometimes surprising.
The work takes the form of a journal that anticipates the future Dictées, which would begin appearing in 1973. According to the manuscript preserved at the Fonds Simenon in Liège, it was written between June 25, 1960, and February 15, 1963. Nearly ten years of gestation, then, for a text long kept secret — an unusual practice for Simenon, who normally published his novels as soon as they were finished. It was pre-published in Le Figaro littéraire of May 11, 1970 (no. 1251).
A magnificent copy, bound by Pierre-Lucien Martin.
Simenon titles bound in this way are extremely rare.