Du côté de chez Swann [Swann’s Way]
Paris, Bernard Grasset, (November 8) 1913.
1 vol. (130 x 190 mm) of [4], 523 and [1] p. Havana morocco, gilt title, date at bottom, contreplats and endpapers of havana Japanese paper, gilt edges on witnesses, preserved covers and spine (binding signed by Clara Gevaert – [titl. Claude Ribal]).
First edition copy with the printer’s imprint dated November 8, 1913, on the back of page 523, and all the characteristics given by Max Brun in Le Livre et l’Estampe, including the “mistake” at Grasset, with the untimely introduction of a dropped space: “GRASSE|T” (on this subject, the mystery remains unsolved, despite the claims that have persisted for almost a century about this typographical accident).
We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.
Du côté de chez Swann was printed in 1750 copies in 1913, with two further print runs of 500 copies each forwarded soon after, with variations in the texts and in the composition.
All have a printer’s imprint dated November 8, 1913. The deluxe editions (5 Japon and 12 Hollande) were printed later, with the errors corrected.
From 1909, Marcel Proust entered into discussions with publishers with a view to the publication of his forthcoming epic, and found in Bernard Grasset an interested interlocutor who agreed to publish the first part of the work at his own expense: Swann’s Way, where the novelist reveals his mastery of the sentence, put at the service of the exposition of feelings and the “intermittences of the heart”. The little universe of Combray is then revealed for the first time, beginning one of the most remarkable literary cycles ever produced, which invites only one thing, to slow down, to take time, to see evoked with total precision the clothes, the faces, colors, perfumes, bodies and time, reconstructing the envelope of a world which he knows indeed is day after day a little more on the slope of imperfection. Nevertheless, no one has ever gone so far in portraiture, flesh and memory.
A very fine copy, enriched with the portrait of Marcel Proust drawn and engraved by Armand Coussens, in drypoint, on Japanese paper, justified and signed (15/120), mounted at the head.
