Sous Les Verrous

Libraire Stock, 1933. 1st Edition. Paperback. 1st French Edition. 12.5 x 19cm paperback, 254pp, fore edge and bottom edge uncut. Number 6 of a limited edition of 27 copies. The front cover has some light spotting a few other marks (please see images) and three 3mm closed tears along the fore edge. The rear cover also has a few very light spots. There area few reading creases to the spine which also has a little uniform toning. Internally, there is no name, bookplate or inscription and, otherthan faint spotting to the front and rear endpapers, the pages are very clean. Biographer Emile van der Wilk states that although De Nève wrote the book in French, it was first published in the UK (as Barred in 1932) then in the Netherlands (as In de Strik) and then in France (as Sous les Verrous on 31/5/1933). The reason for publication in this unusual order was down to Jean Rhys, who saw the manuscript (in French) and translated it into English. In his biography of de Nève, van der Wilk states: In addition to translating the book into English, she had also made it more readable through a thorough editing. She later falsely claimed to her publisher Diana Athill that she had only omitted a few sentences about herself which she thought were a little too "unfair". However, in a letter to her publisher Francis Wyndham dated 10th June 1964, she goes a little further, saying: I tried to follow the original but I had to be cut and arranged a bit. The carving was not insignificant. Six and a half to seven thousand words were deleted, about 10% of the total. Hardly a paragraph remained unchanged. That de Nève also believed that his text had become better as a result can be deduced by the fact that he translated the Dutch edition from the English and not the original French text. Apparently he had difficulty acknowledging this, because in a letter to van Vriesland (27/1/33) he wrote: 'I consider the French version to be by far the best. How could it be otherwise – a book that comes more from the heart than the mind I should, of course, best write in my own language'. De Nève would in turn translate and edit Jean Rhys, book Melodie in Mineur (Voyage in the Dark) in 1935. [At the time of listing, we have first edition copies of both In de Strik and Melodie in Mineur] Rainford & Parris Books welcomes enquiries, so please do not hesitate to ask if you require further images or have any questions. All books are packaged with great care.