ARAGON, Louis. Paris Peasant
ARAGON, Louis. Paris Peasant. Trans. and with an introduction by Simon Watson Taylor. London: Jonathan Cape. 1971. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s mauve cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the attractive wraparound dust jacket designed by Stanley Chapman. A near fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square, a couple of very minor marks to the textblock edges and within, but very clean. The dust jacket Cape-cut with price of £1.90 net to the front flap, a few tiny closed tears and gentle bumps to the corners and spine tips, the front flap with a very tiny stain. Else a sharp and pleasing copy.
A key text in both the Surrealist movement and Parisian literature, “containing the very kernel of surrealism’s doctrine—that the world of the tangible conceals a quality of the marvellous that awaits revelation”. It forms a captivating psychogeographic vision of 20s Paris from a bright, twenty six-year-old mind. The book first appeared in 1924 in the original French (Le Paysan de Paris), but after the author’s abandonment of the movement he helped create in 1930—he opted to devote his intellectual output to Communism—, the book was largely inaccessible. After forty years, Aragon finally spoke out, allowing reprints and translations—this Cape edition is the first English language edition, the first of only two hardcovers, the other being the 1994 Limited Editions Club copy. It remains the definitive text of the movement.
ARAGON, Louis. Paris Peasant. Trans. and with an introduction by Simon Watson Taylor. London: Jonathan Cape. 1971. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s mauve cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the attractive wraparound dust jacket designed by Stanley Chapman. A near fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square, a couple of very minor marks to the textblock edges and within, but very clean. The dust jacket Cape-cut with price of £1.90 net to the front flap, a few tiny closed tears and gentle bumps to the corners and spine tips, the front flap with a very tiny stain. Else a sharp and pleasing copy.
A key text in both the Surrealist movement and Parisian literature, “containing the very kernel of surrealism’s doctrine—that the world of the tangible conceals a quality of the marvellous that awaits revelation”. It forms a captivating psychogeographic vision of 20s Paris from a bright, twenty six-year-old mind. The book first appeared in 1924 in the original French (Le Paysan de Paris), but after the author’s abandonment of the movement he helped create in 1930—he opted to devote his intellectual output to Communism—, the book was largely inaccessible. After forty years, Aragon finally spoke out, allowing reprints and translations—this Cape edition is the first English language edition, the first of only two hardcovers, the other being the 1994 Limited Editions Club copy. It remains the definitive text of the movement.
ARAGON, Louis. Paris Peasant. Trans. and with an introduction by Simon Watson Taylor. London: Jonathan Cape. 1971. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s mauve cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the attractive wraparound dust jacket designed by Stanley Chapman. A near fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square, a couple of very minor marks to the textblock edges and within, but very clean. The dust jacket Cape-cut with price of £1.90 net to the front flap, a few tiny closed tears and gentle bumps to the corners and spine tips, the front flap with a very tiny stain. Else a sharp and pleasing copy.
A key text in both the Surrealist movement and Parisian literature, “containing the very kernel of surrealism’s doctrine—that the world of the tangible conceals a quality of the marvellous that awaits revelation”. It forms a captivating psychogeographic vision of 20s Paris from a bright, twenty six-year-old mind. The book first appeared in 1924 in the original French (Le Paysan de Paris), but after the author’s abandonment of the movement he helped create in 1930—he opted to devote his intellectual output to Communism—, the book was largely inaccessible. After forty years, Aragon finally spoke out, allowing reprints and translations—this Cape edition is the first English language edition, the first of only two hardcovers, the other being the 1994 Limited Editions Club copy. It remains the definitive text of the movement.