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L’Etranger was printed in France on May 19, 1942, in an edition of 4,400 copies. This was as large as initial printings of works by established authors, like Queneau’s Pierrot mon ami and Gide’s Théâtre. Other new Gallimard books by the playwright Jacques Audiberti, the critic Maurice Blanchot, and the essayist Marcel Jouhandeau, had much lower printings. But a new mystery by Georges Simenon had a printing of 11,000 copies, and Saint-Exupéry’s aviation memoirs, Pilote de guerre, 22,000. Camus could not inscribe copies to journalists in the French publishing tradition, nor could he see copies in bookstores or read the first reviews in newspapers. Gaston had decided to put L’Etranger on sale without waiting for the essay, whose proofs Paulhan was correcting, minus the controversial pages on Kafka.
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