One of the first copies on vélin de Lana, this one hors commerce.
“Pour Madeleine Marignac qui a été la précieuse, l'indispensable collaboratrice de cet [Alexandre le Grand] en la remerciant d'avoir apporté à cette tâche un si souriant dévouement. Druon, 1er juillet 1958.”
Published just as Maurice Druon was riding the success of the first volumes of Les Rois maudits, Alexandre le Grand carries the subtitle Le Roman d’un dieu.
Druon’s principal collaborator on the text was the future literary critic Matthieu Galey.
This copy was presented to the woman who was then merely his private secretary, but already his confidante: Madeleine Marignac. She belonged to Druon’s innermost working circle, present behind the scenes of his books and already associated with the early volumes of Les Rois maudits (her name appears in the acknowledgments from volume I through volume VI — a distinction she shares only with Pierre de Lacretelle and Georges Kessel). Her material and intellectual collaboration was already substantial enough for Druon to pay tribute, in writing, to the woman who typed and corrected all his texts, before she became, over time, a much more central presence in his life: their marriage was celebrated on 25 September 1968, two years after Druon’s election to the Académie française.