CÉLINE (Louis-Ferdinand). Death on credit. Novel. Paris : Denoël et Steele, [1936]. - In-8, paperback. First edition dedicated to Lucien Descaves. In this famous novel, Louis-Ferdinand Céline tells with rage and vigor his childhood haunted by poverty. "The public discovers the childhood and adolescence of the author in prey to the miseries and human pettiness through the vicissitudes and the hopeless destiny of the son of shopkeepers Ferdinand Bardamu, to the test, among other places, of the passage Choiseul, renamed "of the Beresinas", asserting that for the small people the life is only death on credit" (Boudrot, "Bibliography of the Denoël and Steele editions", n° 183). As indicated at the beginning of the book: "At the request of the publishers, L.-F. Céline has deleted several sentences from his book, the sentences have not been replaced. They appear as blanks in the book." Despite its public success, the novel was immediately criticized by the critics. Robert Denoël had to publish two months later a defense of the book under the title Apologie de Mort à crédit where he "opposes to the judgment of the elites the good taste of the readers" (Boudrot, ibidem, p. 128). One of the 790 numbered copies on Alpha, this one being one of the 750 put on the market. A very well preserved copy. Scattered foxing.