The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe)

No book-club issue is documented for the Knopf first. Two substantive traps outrank any club tell. First, the Parshley translation is not the complete text: at Knopf's direction Parshley condensed the French, cutting an estimated 10-15 percent, so every 1953 Knopf and Cape copy is an abridgement. The 2009 Borde and Malovany-Chevallier translation is the first unabridged English version and is a 'first thus', not a first edition. Second, on the French side the two volumes were published months apart and are frequently married into sets; each volume's issue and paper state should be checked independently. Later Gallimard printings and the Collection Folio and Idées paperback reissues are reprints.