Jean de Florette (L'Eau des Collines, Tome I).

Monte Carlo, Monaco Editions Pastorelly, 1971. Hardcover Very Good+ to Near Fine: shows no discernible wear at all, but the binding shows slight lean (while remaining perfectly secure); there is a tiny nick at the bottom of the rear panel; the text is clean. Flawed, but appears nearly pristine. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. 330pp. Illustrated with 16 plates in color by Suzanne Ballivet and a couple of duotone drawings. Sewn-in ribbon place marker. Top Edge Gilt. Deep crimson cloth over boards with gilt titles at the front panel and backstrip. Texte definitif. Hardback: No DJ 'as issued'. Marcel Pagnol (1895 –1974) was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. In 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie française. Pagnol is regarded as one of France's greatest 20th century writers and is notable for the fact that he excelled in almost every genre - memoir, novel, play and film. Pagnol was born on 28 February 1895 in Aubagne, Bouches-du-Rhône département, in southern France near Marseille, the eldest son of school teacher Joseph Pagnol and seamstress Augustine Lansot. Marcel Pagnol grew up in Marseille with his younger brothers Paul, René, and younger sister Germaine. In July 1904, the family rented the Bastide Neuve – a house in the sleepy Provençal village of La Treille – for the summer holidays, the first of many spent in the hilly countryside between Aubagne and Marseille. In 1945, Pagnol married for the second time, to actress Jacqueline Bouvier. They had two children together, Frédéric (born 1946) and Estelle (born 1949). Estelle died at the age of two. Pagnol was so devastated that he fled the south and returned to live in Paris. He went back to writing plays, but after his next piece was badly received he decided to begin writing a series of autobiographical novels – Souvenirs d'enfance – based on his childhood experiences. In 1957, the first two novels in the series, La Gloire de mon père and Le château de ma mère were published to instant acclaim. The third, Le Temps des secrets, was published in 1959; though the fourth, Le Temps des Amours, was to remain unfinished and was not published until 1977, after his death. In the meantime, Pagnol turned to a second series, L'Eau des Collines – Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources – which focused on the machinations of Provençal peasant life at the turn of the twentieth century and were published in 1962.