Les Mots [The Words]

Paris, Gallimard, 1963.
1 vol. (120 x 185 mm) of 224 p. Brown morocco, mosaic decoration of seven pieces of havana morocco in relief, enhanced with arabesques of red and green box, title and dates in gilt lettering, gilt edges on booklet, green suede endpapers, folder, slipcase (Paul Bonet, 1964).

First edition.
One of the first 15 copies on japon impérial (no. 15).

The copy also contains Paul Bonet’s original color chart for this binding – the only one he produced on the front endpaper of Les Mots.

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

For Sartre, writing has long been a way of making sense, of “wresting my life, as he put it, from chance”. Here, he draws up a definitive assessment of his past illusions. They were first published in two issues of Les Temps modernes (October and November 1963), before being published by Gallimard in April 1964. “Despite Sartre’s polemical image in French public opinion at the time, press tributes were unanimous, and the often inspired titles of the many articles that reviewed the book reflected the general surprise and emotion (…). The author takes us into the intimacy of his maternal family, the Schweitzers, his grandparents ‘Karl and Mamie’, who welcomed mother and child into their home in Meudon, then into their apartment between the Pantheon and the Luxembourg Gardens (…). My grandfather, Sartre writes, ‘threw me into literature by the care he took to keep me away from it: so much so that to this day, I still wonder […] if I didn’t cover so many pages with my ink, throw so many books on the market that nobody wanted, in the sole and mad hope of pleasing my grandfather”. Sartre struggled to settle this score with his grandfather, right up to his last book on Flaubert. Moreover, despite his efforts to construct himself as the son of no one, as he did in Les Mots, Sartre is indeed the product of the intellectual bourgeoisie in glory, as attested by the documents discovered by historians to build the context of his genealogy” (Anne Cohen-Solal, Sartre).

A perfect copy, in a strictly contemporary binding by Paul Bonet, the first of Bonet’s two bindings for this work, and the only one on this papier de tête. He entrusted the project to the binder René Desmules, who worked from June to December 1964. The copy is listed in the Carnets under reference 1479.

Undoubtedly one of the most precious copies of this milestone of twentieth-century literature, which earned its author the Nobel Prize for Literature in October 1964, which he refused.