GENET, Jean The Thief’s Journal. Paris: The Olympia Press.1954.
Small format 8vo, original green card covers, ruled and lettered in black and white; pp. [ix], 10-291, [iii]; title page with border in green; slightly scuffed at edges; pencil markings to ffep; a very clean copy, internally, the binding string just showing to the lower gutter.
First edition thus, first issue, with the green border to the title page. No. 78 in the Traveller’s Companion Series, printed in Jul 1959 by Impr. Moderne du Lion and priced 1.500 Francs. With an introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre, and translated from the French by Bernard Frechtman. The title was first published in 1949 in a privately printed edition of just 400 copies.
A semi-autobiographical work in which the protagonist wanders through Europe in a state of disarray, romanticising ideas of crime, prostitution, deception and homosexuality. Considered a masterpiece of existentialist literature, it is also widely regarded as a
milestone in the history of gay literature.
Kearney (p. 90)
#2121625