BENDA, Julien.
La Trahison des clercs. Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1927.
In-8 [180 x 116] of 306 pp, (1) f. : black half-chagrin with corners, spine ribbed, gilt head, untrimmed, covers and spine kept (modern binding).
First edition.
"Benda's book is prophetic in both senses of the word, denunciatory and forerunner. It denounced the intelligence that gave scholarly and literary justifications to the unleashing of particular passions - a didactic pleonasm; it announced what would become of societies that would annul all independent spiritual power of totalitarian regimes" (Michel Winock, Le Siècle des intellectuels, pp. 195 and 202).
ONE OF THE FIRST 62 NUMBERED COPIES ON MADAGASCAR (NO. XLVI).
Printing and the Mind of Man, nº 419 : "Undoubtedly one of the major events in political thought between the two wars.
