Le Blé en herbe

12mo of (1) leaf, 249 pp.

Unbound copy, partially unopened, printed cover, as published.

197 x 117 mm.

Colette, Sidonie-Gabrielle. The Ripening Seed. Novel.

Ernest Flammarion, 1923.

First edition of this famous coming-of-age novel by Colette.

One of the 350 deluxe copies on Hollande paper.

“Colette’s talent captured a moment, that of the passage from childhood to adolescence, from carefree games to the conquest of a future as man and woman” (Sophie Galabru).

“A tremor of emotions, fears, fatigue. The adults who seem to belong to another world, so distant, so vague. In The Ripening Seed, Colette speaks of adolescence, this moment when sensuality complicates the rules of the game. Under the opal skies of Brittany, in the lingering scent of the tides, Colette observes the blossoming of passion between Phil and Vinca, a waltz in which the masculine and feminine swirl to the point of blurring boundaries and identities” (Lisbeth Koutchoumoff).

Vinca and Philippe are vacation friends; their parents, the Ferrets and the Audeberts, rent the same villa on the Cancale coast every summer. That summer, the brotherly friendship—a bond made of adventures, crayfishing, laughter, and sandy squabbles—crosses the troubled water of emerging desires: “Their whole childhood united them, adolescence divides them.” During their outings, Vinca and Phil were neither boy nor girl to each other, but two holiday companions. The swims become quiet games of glances beneath which the body of the other gradually emerges, as does the awakening of desire. Philippe observes and takes in his little companion; from that moment, Vinca appears as a woman, the woman he must possess. The other breaks free towards their own identity, their future sexuality, in a newfound weakness that needs to be captivated. If childhood lay between Vinca and Philippe as a time without length, distance, or otherness, adolescence now irresistibly disturbs the peace of bodies.

“Colette was clear about her novel’s purpose: it was to remind us that passion has no age, and that the fifteen-year-old girl is already a woman, with all the suffering and energy of maturity. Opposite the reasonable, selfish, and rather burdensome man, The Ripening Seed thus raises a hymn to woman, to her delicate sensitivity and her generosity” (Dictionary of Works).

Fine copy, one of the 350 deluxe on Hollande paper, of this literary original, preserved in wrappers, partially uncut, as issued.