ASSE Geneviève and BECKETT Samuel. ABANDONED. Paris, Georges Visat, [1971] : Italian style in-8 (174 x 257 mm) of [44] pp, in sheets, embossed title on the first cover, in publisher's slipcase. Original edition with 12 drypoints by Geneviève Asse. Limited edition of 72 numbered copies on Arches vellum, signed by the author and artist at the justification. One of the 10 first copies (no. 6), the only ones to include a suite of twelve signed etchings in a printed sleeve. Samuel Beckett, who preferred the white works of Geneviève Asse to the blue canvases, once remarked in front of one of them: "This is work without a net. There could be no higher praise from a writer whose entire oeuvre meets this requirement. Beckett had met Geneviève Asse in the studio she occupied on boulevard Blanqui in the early 50s; economy of means, formal rigour, the aesthetics of emptiness and trace, there was no shortage of shared preoccupations, and in 1970, when the Irish writer entrusted the engraver with the task of creating a work of art, Beckett had no hesitation in doing so. When the Irish writer asked the engraver to illustrate this short unpublished text, she gave him twelve small plates engraved with drypoint and diamondpoint. A masterpiece by Geneviève Asse, Abandonné is, alongside Fizzles with Jasper Fizzles with Jasper Johns, Abandonné is one of Samuel Beckett's most accomplished collaborations with an illustrator. Printer: Atelier Leblanc, Paris. Bibliography: Mason 168 - 179.