CÉLINE (Louis-Ferdinand). Féerie pour une autre fois *. Paris : Gallimard, [1952]. -In-16, 186 x 117: 327 pp, (2 ff. last blank), printed cover. Charcoal gray box, boards decorated with five thick horizontal stripes modeled in the same hide, the upper edges of which protrude slightly and are painted red, smooth spine with title in red letters, charcoal gray box edge-to-edge lining, gray suede endpapers, untrimmed, cover and spine preserved, charcoal gray box spine slipcase (N. Kiyomiya 2011) Dauphin & Fouché, 52A9. First edition of the first part of this novel by Céline. The sequel appeared in 1954 under the title Normance. This is the author's first text published by Gallimard. Patrice Balson has summed up the genesis of this work perfectly: "The first traces of the project date back to the autumn of 1945. Céline was then in Copenhagen, where he had taken refuge since the end of March, almost a year after leaving Paris to flee the Allied advance. The first idea was a "memoir", a polemical text written in the spirit of pamphlets, which the writer intended to defend himself, and which he chose to call the Battle of the Styx. This memoir would eventually provide the material for the vast body of work (Féerie pour une autre fois I and II, D'un château l'autre, Nord and Rigodon) made up of the last five novels, of which Féerie pour une autre fois is the opening, and in which the writer "chronicles" the events in his life between the months preceding his departure from Paris (June 17, 1944) and his imprisonment in Denmark (December 17, 1945). The actual writing did not begin until the spring of 1946, when Céline was incarcerated in Copenhagen's Vestre Fœngsel prison. In a letter to his wife dated March 28, Céline describes this first draft as an evocation of the "bombing of the Butte" [...] The drafting work, which initially slowed down due to the harsh conditions imposed by imprisonment, made significant progress when Céline was transferred from prison to a city hospital (March 1947). By then, the text had lost its polemical character and become a novel in its own right, but it still covers, in spirit, the totality of his experiences between 1944 and 1946. Céline didn't decide to split Féerie into two volumes until February 1950. The decision to make the bombing of April 1944 the sole subject of Féerie II was not taken until March 1951" (Patrice Balson, in Céline, la Mort et le Diable, Librinova, 2023). ONE OF 45 FIRST NUMBERED EXEMPLIES ON HOLLAND VAN GELDER, this one of 10 hors commerce (B). EXEMPLAIRE DU MÉDECIN ANDRÉ WILLEMIN (1910-1987), enriched with this autograph dispatch signed by the author: A Willemin // André // LF Céline Willemin regularly visited his friend Céline at his villa in Meudon at the end of his life. It was he who declared the writer's death on July 1, 1961. A very fine copy bound by Nobuko Kiyomiya. Provenance: André Willemin, with consignment from the author.