184 - [NOZIÈRES]. Violette Nozières. Brussels, Éditions Nicolas Flamel [E.L.T. Mesens], undated [1933]. In-8, paperback, illustrated cover, full margins, modern red paper slipcase.

[NOZIÈRES]. Violette Nozières. Brussels, Éditions Nicolas Flamel [E.L.T. Mesens], undated [1933]. In-8, paperback, illustrated cover, full margins, modern red paper slipcase. First edition: one of the first 20 copies printed on Holland paper, the only large-format paper (no. XVIII). A famous pamphlet published by the Surrealists in defense of the young Violette Nozières, who was sentenced to death for poisoning her parents with sleeping pills. While her mother survived, her father—whom she accused of incest—died. A symbol of society’s hypocrisy, Violette Nozières quickly became the muse of the Surrealists, who dedicated this collection of poems and drawings to her: “But the father, who could feel the fire of his locomotive just below his navel, was raping Violette in the garden arbor, amid the shovel handles that inspired him; she would then return to study, caught between the ill-fated engineer and her mother, who was plotting her revenge” (Benjamin Péret). André Breton believed that the father gave his daughter a “first name in the first part of which one can psychoanalytically unravel his agenda.” The illustration includes 8 drawings by Salvador Dalí, Hans Arp, Yves Tanguy, Magritte, Max Ernst, Victor Brauner, Marcel Jean, and Alberto Giacometti, based on texts by André Breton, René Char, Paul Éluard, Maurice Henry, Mesens, César Moro, Benjamin Péret, and Gui Rosey. Handwritten inscription on the half-title page: To Madame Valentine Hugo, a tribute from the publisher Mesens, April 13, 1934 One of the founders of Surrealism in Belgium, Édouard Léon Théodore Mesens (1903–1971) operated under the pseudonym Éditions Nicolas Flamel. He later became director of the London Gallery. A perfect copy, preserved as published, with full margins.