Open All Night - Paul Morand (Signed by Vyvyan Holland)
MORAND, Paul. Open All Night. London: Chapman and Dodd, 1923.
Second English edition (first published in French in 1922; first English translation issued in 1923).
Translated from the original French by H.B.V. - Vyvyan Holland (1886-1967) - accomplished translator, writer, and son of Oscar Wilde. Inscribed and signed by the translator: ‘To J.G. Millward. With best wishes from the translator, Vyvyan Holland. May 1924.’
This English translation by Vyvyan Holland of Open All Night had been praised as ‘one of those rare translations which make it unnecessary to read the original' (Desmond MacCarthy). His talent reflected his ancestry, both Oscar Wilde and Wilde's parents William and Jane having been accomplished translators whose originals—like Holland's—were in many languages. Like them he sought to enrich English literature by making little-known foreign works of unusual genius accessible. (ODNB)
Paul Morand (1888-1976) was a master of French modernist prose, admired by Marcel Proust and Ezra Pound. Open All Night explores the author’s aesthetic of aftermath through his female characters and their attitudes to love and desire in the years immediately following the end of the first world war. The book comprises of six stories told in the first person by the male narrator, each recalling encounters across Europe with mysterious, wayward, sexually adventurous and troubled young women.
Morand was married to Romanian princess Hélène Soutzo, Proust’s last muse. During the Second World War he was Vichy French Ambassador to Romania and Switzerland. Morand was made a member of the Académie Française in 1963, and in 1977 the Grand prix de littérature Paul-Morand was established, a top literary prize handed out every second year, alternately with the Grand prix de littérature de l'Académie française.
220 pp. 8vo, original cloth. Endpapers browned. Very good.