Albert Camus The Plague 1961 Knopf Hardcover Jean Carlu Dust Jacket

Description

Originally published in France as La Peste in 1947 and translated into English by Stuart Gilbert the following year, The Plague follows the inhabitants of Oran, Algeria, as disease seals the city off from the outside world. Camus turns epidemic, quarantine, fear and death into a larger examination of isolation, responsibility, resistance and the ways ordinary people respond to collective catastrophe. The novel became one of the defining works of twentieth-century French literature; Camus received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.

This January 1961 later printing retains much of the physical character of Knopf’s original American edition: black cloth with the Grim Reaper stamped into the front board, purple topstain, and, most importantly, Jean Carlu’s striking scythe-and-wall dust-jacket design. The unclipped $3.95 price identifies it as the later jacket issue rather than the $3.00 jacket found on the 1948 first printing. It’s not a scarce first edition pretending to be one—it’s simply a terrific-looking early hardcover reading copy of Camus’ masterpiece in the classic Knopf package.

A handsome, affordable way to put Camus on the shelf with the great Jean Carlu jacket still wrapped around it.