"THE PLAGUE NEVER DIES OR DISAPPEARS FOR GOOD": FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH OF CAMUS' THE PLAGUE
CAMUS, Albert. The Plague. Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert. London: Hamish Hamilton, (1948). Octavo, original blue-green cloth, original dust jacket.
First edition in English of Camus' gripping allegory of the German occupation, published one year after the French first edition.
"Camus is not only a giant among French moralists—an important and characteristic strain in French literature—but he stands as one of the most profound thinkers of the 20th century as well" (Pribic, Nobel Laureates in Literature, 75). "The Plague is parable and sermon, and should be considered as such. To criticize it by standards which apply to most fiction would be to risk condemning it for moralizing, which is exactly where it is strongest… There are certain things which need to be said now, without care for the future, and these are said in The Plague" (Stephen Spender in Books of the Century, 159). Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Originally published as La Peste in France in 1947. Connolly, The Modern Movement 95. Small early owner inscription.
Text fresh, only faint toning to spine of about-fine book; light edge-wear, tiny bit of archival tape repair to verso of near-fine dust jacket.