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 grey box, boards decorated with five thick horizontal bands modelled in the same skin, the upper edges of which project slightly and are painted red, smooth spine with title in red lettering, edge-to-edge charcoal grey box lining, grey suede endpapers, untrimmed, cover and spine preserved, spine slipcase in charcoal grey box (N. Kiyomiya 2011) Dauphin & Fouché, 52A9. First edition of the first part of this novel by Céline. The sequel was published in 1954 under the title Normance. This is the author's first text to be published by Gallimard. Patrice Balson 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, a body of work of which Féerie pour une autre fois is the opening and in which the writer "chronicles" the events in his life between the months before his departure from Paris (17 June 1944) and his imprisonment in Denmark (17 December 1945). The actual writing did not begin until the spring of 1946, when Céline was incarcerated in Vestre Fœngsel prison in Copenhagen. In a letter to his wife dated 28 March, this first draft is described as an evocation of the "bombing of the Butte" [...] The writing process, which initially slowed down because of the harsh conditions imposed by imprisonment, made significant progress when Céline was transferred from prison to a city hospital (March 1947). By that time, the text had lost its polemical character and become a novel in its own right, but it still covered, in spirit, the totality of Céline's experiences between 1944 and 1946. Céline only decided to split Féerie into two volumes in 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 THE FIRST 45 NUMBERED COPIES ON HOLLAND VAN GELDER, this being one of the 10 hors commerce (B). EXEMPLAIRE OF THE DOCTOR ANDRÉ WILLEMIN (1910-1987), enriched with this autograph letter 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 dead on 1 July 1961. A very fine copy bound by Nobuko Kiyomiya. Provenance: André Willemin, with a consignment from the author.