"COLETTE" (i.e. Sidonie-Gabrielle COLETTE). L'Entrave. Paris: Librairie des Lettres. 1913.
8vo. Original cream wrappers printed in black and red, uncut, preserved in a modern cloth slip-case; pp. [4], 307, [1]; light marginal water-staining, mostly at the beginning, hinges reinforced, but overall a remarkably good copy; authorial inscription to half-title in ink: “A Georges Abric en témoignage d’une grande sympathie, Colette de Jouvenel” (see below).
First edition in book form, a presentation copy signed by the author to one of the witnesses at her second wedding.
First serialised in La Vie Parisienne, L’Entrave (The Shackle) is the sequel to La Vagabonde (1910). The tone, however, is different: Colette had by then married Henry de Jouvenel (1912) and given birth to their daughter (1913). She recounted with humour, in L’Étoile Vesper, the double pressure of childbearing and serialisation: “The child and the novel were racing me, and La Vie Parisienne, which was publishing my unfinished novel in instalments, was gaining ground. The child announced that it would arrive first, and I screwed the cap back onto my pen”. Later, Colette judged the book harshly, denouncing its “narrow ending,” its “diminished heroes,” and its “blessing tone” – perhaps betraying her distaste for the sudden reversal of her heroine Renée Néré.
Provenance: From the library of Georges Abric, a friend of Henry de Jouvenel and one of the witnesses (témoins) at their wedding on 19 December 1912.
See La Société des amis de Colette, online.
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