GRACQ (Julien).

Le Rivage des Syrtes. Paris, José Corti, 1951. In-12, paperback, full margins, uncut; navy blue half-box folder titled with palladium, bluish balsa boards lined with beige suede, matching lined slipcase (Devauchelle). First edition. One of the 40 first copies on Rives laid paper. Julien Gracq's masterpiece, Le Rivage des Syrtes was awarded the 1951 Goncourt Prize. But its author, who had denounced in La Littérature à l'estomac (Literature in the Stomach) what he considered to be a commercial compromise in the literary world, had declared in an open letter to the Figaro littéraire of November 28: "Not only am I not, and never have been, a candidate, but, since it seems that one is not a candidate for the Goncourt Prize, let us say, to make myself better understood, that I am, as resolutely as possible, a non-candidate. Le Figaro littéraire followed Gracq's letter with this clarification: "There is no candidacy for the prize. So there is no 'non-candidature' either. In fact, on 3 December 1951, the Académie Goncourt awarded its prize to Rivage des Syrtes, which Julien Gracq refused. Copy as issued, of great purity. It is preserved in a luxurious slipcase made by Devauchelle.