Bonjour tristesse
Paris, Julliard, (December) 1954.
1 vol. (120 x 185 mm) of 188 p., 1 and [1] f. In wrappers, uncut.
The first edition, dated 5 March 1954, included a deluxe printing of 30 copies on alfa paper. This new December printing followed it. One of 200 hors commerce copies on Corvol l’Orgueilleux paper, printed for “Noël 1954.”
Signed presentation inscription: “À Monsieur Gheerbrant, en toute amitié. Françoise Sagan.”
Signed presentation inscription: “À Monsieur Gheerbrant, en toute amitié. Françoise Sagan.”
At the height of her triumph, Sagan was eighteen. François Mauriac, then a columnist for Le Figaro, dubbed her the “charming little monster.” An adolescent girl, leading an idle existence with her widowed father, finds her tranquility disturbed by one of his mistresses. The girl’s schemes lead to the young woman’s death, leaving the heroine with a certain taste of remorse and a new companion: sadness.
Françoise Sagan once amused herself by writing her own obituary: “She made her appearance in 1954, with a slim novel, Bonjour Tristesse, which caused a worldwide scandal. Her death, after a life and a body of work equally pleasant and slapdash, was a scandal only to herself.”
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