DE MONTHERLANT, Henry. Costals and the Hippogriff. Trans. from the French by John Rodker. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1940. First American edition. Publisher’s pale red cloth lettered in cherry red to spine, in the dust jacket. A fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square, the topstain vivid. The contents fine throughout. The dust jacket unclipped ($2.75 net), very gently rubbed at extremities but a fine copy overall.
An acclaimed yet largely forgotten novel by a talented and albeit problematic author, writing mostly in Paris from the 20s onwards. Originally published in the French as Le Démon du Bien and simultaneously published in England under the title The Lepers, this is the third volume in Montherlant’s tetralogy, titled Les Jeunes Filles (The Young Girls), which follows a womanising writer and his escape from potential marriages, ‘nothing but a devilish concoction whereby the inferior female dupes the unsuspecting male’. Simone de Beauvoir took aim at Montherlant and his tetralogy in her foundational The Second Sex (1949)—which has probably sullied his reputation outside France since—but his apparent misogyny is perhaps a little more complex. Raised by a deeply reactionary father who respected only masculine prowess and rejected societal or technological change (the family lived without electricity), life for young Montherlant, a homosexual steered by his father towards a military life in deeply Catholic convention likely paved stones too heavy to displace. His apparent support of the German annihilation of his country in the Second World War did nothing to help his cause, either. Yet still he remains a key figure in early twentieth century French literature and one little read when compared to his contemporaries.
DE MONTHERLANT, Henry. Costals and the Hippogriff. Trans. from the French by John Rodker. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1940. First American edition. Publisher’s pale red cloth lettered in cherry red to spine, in the dust jacket. A fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square, the topstain vivid. The contents fine throughout. The dust jacket unclipped ($2.75 net), very gently rubbed at extremities but a fine copy overall.
An acclaimed yet largely forgotten novel by a talented and albeit problematic author, writing mostly in Paris from the 20s onwards. Originally published in the French as Le Démon du Bien and simultaneously published in England under the title The Lepers, this is the third volume in Montherlant’s tetralogy, titled Les Jeunes Filles (The Young Girls), which follows a womanising writer and his escape from potential marriages, ‘nothing but a devilish concoction whereby the inferior female dupes the unsuspecting male’. Simone de Beauvoir took aim at Montherlant and his tetralogy in her foundational The Second Sex (1949)—which has probably sullied his reputation outside France since—but his apparent misogyny is perhaps a little more complex. Raised by a deeply reactionary father who respected only masculine prowess and rejected societal or technological change (the family lived without electricity), life for young Montherlant, a homosexual steered by his father towards a military life in deeply Catholic convention likely paved stones too heavy to displace. His apparent support of the German annihilation of his country in the Second World War did nothing to help his cause, either. Yet still he remains a key figure in early twentieth century French literature and one little read when compared to his contemporaries.
