Description

FIRST EDITION Prix Goncourt 1914 (awarded in 1916).
Current edition after 10 copies on Hollande.

Attached a HAND-WRITTEN LETTER  [to Rachilde]: "[...] of my play, which is bad, and yours, which is admirable. […] Le Vendeur de Soleil" is one of the most powerful things I know in its sobriety. It evokes all human misery, with the comfort and emptiness of illusion. It's ferociously ironic, and brings to life all the pain and nothingness...» 

Born in Nyons, Adrien Bertrand moved to Paris at an early age, publishing two volumes of verse and founding the magazine The Chimeras. An anti-militarist, he nevertheless joined the troops and was even a hero when he killed six Germans he came across by chance. Wounded in Lorraine by shrapnel, he died slowly, but survived long enough to finish the war. The call of the soilPrix Goncourt 1916. He dedicated the book to his brother, Georges Bertrand, who had been wounded several times in battle: "In memory / my little brother / of that tragic evening in the summer of 1914 / when we met / under machine-gun fire". He died on 18 November 1917.