La Batarde.

LEDUC, Violette.

Publication Date: 1964

About this Item

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 "a Anne Germain, avec ma sympa tres attentive apres un bon apres-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".A historically overlooked yet scarce classic, La Batarde stands as one of the boldest explorations of sex, sexuality, and female experience in twentieth-century French literature. Its author, one of France's most uncompromising autobiographers, sought not provocation but precision: of the lesbian passages excised from her earlier novel Ravages, she explained that she was "trying to render as accurately as possible, as minutely as possible, the sensations felt in physical love. not aiming for scandal but only to describe the woman's experience with precision",Far ahead of its time, La Batarde narrowly missed the Prix Goncourt yet went on to become a bestseller.

Seller Inventory # 2121007

Bibliographic Details

• Title: La Batarde.
• Publication Date: 1964
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition