"France's Greatest Unknown Writer"
LEDUC, Violette. La Bâtarde. Paris: Gallimard. 1964.
8vo. Beige paper card wrappers with title in red and black to cover; pp. [4], 462; very minimal toning to spine and slight stains to front cover; otherwise near fine; authorial inscription to half-title "à Anne Germain, avec ma sympa très attentive après un bon après-midi… Violette Leduc".
First French edition with an intimate inscription to the actress Anne Germain, affectionately thanking her for a good afternoon.
"A woman is descending into the most secret part of herself", writes Simone de Beauvoir in her illuminating preface, "and telling us about all she finds there with an unflinching sincerity, as though there were no one listening".
This historically overlooked cult classic is revered for its bold exploration of sex and sexuality and yet still remains a marginalised and extremely scarce feminist memoir from one of France's most starkly uncompromising autobiographers or otherwise known as: "France's greatest unknown writer". Of the passionate lesbian scenes excised from her novel, Ravages, she would defend her art as such; "I am trying to render as accurately as possible, as minutely as possible, the sensations felt in physical love. In this there is doubtless something that every woman can understand. I am not aiming for scandal but only to describe the woman’s experience with precision".
La Bâtarde came close to winning the Prix Goncourt and very swiftly became a best-seller in France as a consequence of its original ability to elevate the genre of the autobiography into a woman's powerfully authentic and artistic self-portrait; a work far ahead of its time.
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