[Surrealism] Violette Nozières

Brussels: Editions Nicolas Flamel, 1933. 8vo.; illustrated throughout in black-and-white; uncut pages; photographically illustrated wrappers stamped in burgundy; mylar dust-jacket, as issued. Minor wear to edges. Original material inserted loosely.   First edition of 2,000 copies, the full edition.  In March of 1933, 18-year-old Violette Nozières attempted to poison her lower-middle-class parents, engine driver Jean-Baptiste and housewife Germaine, with an insufficient dose of barbiturates. Violette was posing as an upstanding student in the confines of their tiny shared apartment and slipping out after dark to subsidize her escapades in Paris’s Latin Quarter with occasional sex work. When she fell for Jean Dabin, a gambler with expensive tastes, and promised to pay his rather hefty debts, a more rapid influx of cash was required, and her parents were the closest source to hand. In August of the same year, she poisoned them again, and, in the case of her stepfather, was successful. Aft