JARRY (Alfred). Le Surmâle. Paris: Le Club français du livre, 1963. — Small folio, 300 x 250: (2 blank folios), 261 pp., (5 blank folios at the beginning and end), unprinted cover. Unbound, with a pasted-on cover, publisher’s slipcase and dust jacket. Edition printed in a run of 226 copies, illustrated with 31 copper engravings by Louis Mitelberg, known as TIM (1919–2002), an artist, caricaturist, and sculptor of Polish origin. This text is the last novel published during Alfred Jarry’s lifetime, written in 1901 and published in 1902. The story opens with a provocative sentence: “Love is an act of no importance, since it can be done indefinitely.” To prove the existence of a “supermale”—capable of exceptional sexual feats—chemist William Elson organizes a 10,000-mile bicycle race (Paris to Irkutsk) using his “perpetual-motion food.” A mysterious shadow—the “supermale”—rivals the cyclists, leaving behind the corpses of women. Once captured, he achieves the ultimate feat: 82 times, breaking every record. Africa is not the central theme of the book, but it is mentioned in various passages, notably on pages 28 and 31 (“ I’ve only been to Africa in times of peace”), and 33 (“the scholars, as you’ve heard, stick to the opinion of the savages of central Africa…”). On pages 169 and 170, Jarry also uses the word “nègre” twice. One of the first 10 copies printed on hand-made paper from the Moulin Richard de Bas; this copy, numbered 1, is the only one featuring an original drawing signed by the artist and a crossed-out copperplate. The drawing is framed here. Stains on the dust jacket and slipcase.