La Sagesse dans le sang (Wise Blood).: Traduit de l'anglais et préfacé par M. E. Coindreau.

Paris: Gallimard,, 1959. Presentation copy to the original publisher First edition in French, first printing, inscribed by the author to the first publisher of this masterful debut novel, "For Bob from Flannery with cheers". Bob Giroux's influence on O'Connor spanned her entire professional career. Their relationship is discussed at length in the monograph Flannery O'Connor and Robert Giroux: A Publishing Partnership (2018) by Patrick Samway. Soon after meeting O'Connor in 1949, Giroux (1914-2008) rescued Wise Blood from its prospective publisher Rinehart, who O'Connor felt "wanted her to produce a different and far more conventional book" (Orlando). Rinehart's apprehension was not entirely misplaced: after Giroux published the novel in 1952 at his firm Harcourt, Brace & Company, he stated that "from a publishing point of view Wise Blood was a flop... I was disappointed by the reviews more than [O'Connor] was; they all recognized her power but missed her point" (cited in Gooch, p. 206). The work subsequently became an internationally acknowledged classic of the Southern Gothic, a genre which captivated French audiences largely through the translations of Maurice-Edgar Coindreau (1892-1990). This edition and others by Coindreau introduced to the francophone world such figures as O'Connor, Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Faulkner, ushering in the "Age of the American Novel" in France. Wise Blood "sets the tone for the religiously displaced types that haunt her fiction" (ANB) and "combines the keen ear for common speech, the caustic religious imagination, and the flair for the absurd that were to characterize O'Connor's subsequent work" (Ency. Brit.) Her posthumous Complete Stories (1971) was edited by Giroux and received a National Book Award. Octavo. Original wrappers printed in red and black, this copy with publisher's perforation stamp on rear wrapper, "SP" ("Service de Presse", likely designating it a press copy), leaves largely unopened. Creasing to spine, affecting a few leaves at gutter, wrappers and contents mildly toned, occasional rough opening and short closed tears. A very good copy of this fragile publication. Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor, 2008.