Le Supplice de Phèdre
One of 109 réimposé copies on vergé paper, this one a nominative copy for P. Duché (no. III).
A close friend of Jean Cocteau and a familiar figure in the NRF circle, Henri Deberly received the prize for this psychological novel, in which jealousy, passion and cruelty of feeling crystallize. Drawing on the tragic legacy of Racine, Le Supplice de Phèdre transposes the mechanisms of an intimate drama into a contemporary setting, confirming the jury’s predilection for writers associated with the Nouvelle Revue Française, which, after Proust (1919), Fabre (1923) and Sandre (1924), continued to accumulate distinctions and established the NRF as the principal breeding ground of interwar French literature.
Pierre Duché copy: a Paris merchant, he was the uncle of Gaston Gallimard and contributed financially to the fortunes of the publishing house. He was also a noted bibliophile.
From the “Prix Goncourt” library of Gérard Pouguet, with bookplate.