SARTRE, Jean-Paul. Huis Clos.

(London): Horizon Press, 1945.  First edition thus.  12mo.  59 pages.  Although published in the UK, this is in the original French text.  An existentialist play that was first performed at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in May 1944.  The play begins with three characters who find themselves waiting in a mysterious room. It is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for eternity. The work is the source of Sartre’s especially famous and often misunderstood quotation “L’enfer, c’est les autres” or “Hell is other people”, a reference to Sartre’s ideas about the look and the perpetual ontological struggle of being caused to see oneself as an object from the view of another consciousness.  This is a very good copy in card covers with printed paper jacket.  Published in an edition of 500 numbered copies.