Jean Bruller alias VERCORS. Lot n° 281

The Silence of the Sea. Récit. Paris, les Éditions de Minuit, 1942. Small in-12 : paperback, filled cover. First edition. Printed on February 20, 1942, it was printed in an edition of 350 copies. The copy is complete with the inserted leaflet entitled Les Éditions de Minuit, written by Pierre de Lescure, manifesto of the new editions. First book of the Éditions de Minuit founded in the underground by Jean Bruller, alias Vercors, with his friend Pierre de Lescure. It is dedicated "To the memory of Saint-Pol-Roux, murdered poet". Very moving autograph letter to one of the organizers of the Vercors maquis: to Pierre Dalloz, for whom the name of Vercors meant so many hopes and then so many disappointments, this book on a name that is now heavy to bear, but the friend is called Jean Bruller. Architect and experienced mountaineer, Pierre Dalloz (1900-1992) is the author of the Montagnards plan, at the origin of the creation of the Vercors maquis. After the dismantling of the first Vercors in April-May 1943 by the Italian police, Dalloz went to Algiers and then to London where he pleaded for a reconstitution of the maquis which was finally defeated by a general offensive of the German army in July 1944. 456 maquis members were massacred - including the writer Jean Prévost, a friend of Dalloz and one of the military leaders of the maquis. Vercors' post-war letter to the creator of the maquis is a particularly moving testimony.