[PROUST (Marcel)]. GIDE (André). Les Nourritures terrestres. Paris, Mercure de France, 1897. In-12, brown half-percaline bradel, red title page, untrimmed (contemporary binding). First edition. The work met with no response on publication, before becoming the cult book of an entire generation. Copy on strong vellum marked with a green trefoil in the justification of the print run. Only 3 copies of this book were printed on japon and 12 on hollande. Precious copy of Marcel Proust, with this note in the hand of his friend Robert de Billy on a flyleaf: "This book given by Gide to Marcel Proust was given to me by him and I disposed of it for Madame Politis who had been surprised by the value of a first edition. Certified by me Robert de Billy. The volume contains numerous reading marks in pencil (underlining and brackets) and two marginal annotations, p. 17 and p. 22, which appear to be in Proust's hand. The tenacious legend of an alleged hostility between Gide and Proust is based on the famous episode of Gide's refusal to publish Un amour de Swann with the NRF in 1912 - a refusal motivated, he wrote in his letter of contrition in January 1914, by Proust's reputation as a "snob" and "amateur socialite", and by his "distracted" reading of the first volume of La Recherche. Proust replied that if he had wanted to be published by the NRF, it was essentially for the pleasure of being read by Gide: "I said to myself: 'If I am published by the NRF, I have a great chance of being read by him'", and he even claimed to be "extremely sincere" - which is doubtful - when he told him: "The joy of receiving your letter infinitely outweighs the joy I would have had of being published by the NRF". And yet Gide is certainly acting in good faith when he proclaims to Proust: "And now it is not enough for me to love this book [Swann], I feel that I am in love with it and with you with a very singular kind of affection, admiration, predilection." Nor is there any reason to doubt Proust's emotion on reading Les Nourritures terrestres, a book whose "most secret beauties" he praised in a letter to Gide in January 1918 (Kolb, XVI, 238), and whose call to enjoy the beauty of the moment and injunction to free oneself from moral shackles could not fail to move him. From the library of Robert de Billy (1869-1953), a long-standing friend of Marcel Proust and one of the models for the character of Saint-Loup, diplomat and French ambassador to Greece and Japan, with armorial bookplate. Naville, n°34.