CÉLINE (Louis-Ferdinand). - Lot 143

CÉLINE (Louis-Ferdinand). Mort à crédit. Novel. Paris: Denoël et Steele, [1936]. - In-8, 218x143: 697 pp, (1 blank f.), printed cover. Paperback, in modern hardback folder and slipcase. First edition dedicated to Lucien Descaves. In this famous novel, Louis-Ferdinand Céline recounts with rage and vigor his childhood haunted by poverty. "The public discovers the author's childhood and adolescence, prey to human misery and pettiness, through the vicissitudes and hopeless destiny of Ferdinand Bardamu, the son of shopkeepers, in the passage Choiseul, renamed "des Bérésinas", among other places, asserting that for little people, life is only death on credit" (Boudrot, Bibliographie des éditions Denoël et Steele, n°183). As stated at the beginning of the book: "At the request of the publishers, L.-F. Céline has deleted several sentences from his book, but they have not been replaced. They appear as blanks in the book." Despite its public success, the novel was immediately panned by the critics. Two months later, Robert Denoël had to publish a defense of the book under the title Apologie de Mort à crédit, in which he "opposes the judgment of the elites to the good taste of the readers" (Boudrot, ibidem, p. 128). One of 790 numbered copies on Alpha, this being one of 750 placed on the market. A very well preserved copy.