“My whole face is breaking out. It is covered with puffy areas, scabs and some flowing acid serum which tears up my nerves. I suppose I shall finish the exteriors this morning… Alekan knows in advance the kind of strangeness that I am after… The least workman is gracious. Not one of them has sulked in spite of this tedious shifting around of wires… following orders, which from the outside, seem sheer caprice… The makeup men and the dressers know their jobs. Lucile and Escoffier carry their tiny mistakes as if they were a cross. In short, the unit is an extension of myself. The old dream of forming one person out of many is fully realized. I will put up with this pain until it becomes unbearable.” GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 142 pages
Illustrated

Written during the last 10 years of Cocteau’s life, Diary of an Unknown is a collection of essays covering many of the author’s familiar topics and themes: angels, invisibility, the treachery of friends and supposed friends, the delight in paradox and contradiction, advice to the young, the birth of ideas. At times annoyingly self-referential and overly clever (“Know that your works speak only to those on the same wavelength as you”), the volume is nevertheless a masterly blend of personal experience, classical erudition and mellifluent style that is uniquely Cocteau’s. Includes intimate recollections of Proust, Picasso, Stravinsky, Sartre and Gide. The collection proves yet again that Cocteau is at his most effective and empathetic when he’s able to drop the “grande dame of French letters” persona and immerse himself in his subjects rather than himself—a feat he’s most capable of pulling off when speaking of the dispossessed, be it the homosexual or the artist: “This is where the poet’s torment comes from, a torment he knows he’s not responsible for, yet forces himself to believe he is, so as to give himself the backbone to suffer life until he dies.” Despite its minor glitches, this is an invaluable read from one of the giants of 20th century French writing. MDG

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 234 pages

Perhaps a better title for this volume might have been “80 or so Drawings We Got the Rights to, Many of Which Are Erotic.” With portraits of subjects ranging of famous personages to objects of his affection to school friends, this book offers an unusually strong cross section of Cocteau’s art. Printed on matte paper, the drawings presented here were created primarily during the 1930s. Approximately 16 rather explicit drawings are from the second edition of his unhappy tale of homosexual love, Le Livre Blanc. Originally published anonymously to protect his mother while she was alive, the drawings were later added to the second edition. Also included are an introduction, which provides the background to the art presented, and a chronology of Cocteau’s life. JAT

Publisher: Dufour
Hardback: 110 pages
Illustrated

“A brother and sister, orphaned in adolescence, build themselves a private world out of one shared room and their own unbridled fantasies. What started in games and laughter became for Paul and Elisabeth a drug too magical to resist. The crime which finally destroyed them has the inevitability of Greek tragedy. Includes 20 of Cocteau’s drawings.”

Publisher: New Directions
Paperback: 183 pages
Illustrated

This slim volume follows the adventures of a youth of humble origins who exploits the privileges garnered through being mistaken for the relative of a great French general during World War I. He is befriended by a noblewoman and her daughter and assists with their genteel wartime charities. But, hungering for action, Guillaume secures a position at the Flemish front and discovers that the 19th-century notions of gallantry have little place among the horrors of a 20th-century mechanized war. An elegiac fable, The Impostor economically illustrates the passing of the grace and elegance of the European aristocracy as the modern world emerged with a vengeance. JAT

Publisher: Dufour
Paperback: 133 pages
Illustrated

“Five full-length plays: Orpheus, The Infernal Machine, The Knights of the Round Table, Bacchus, The Eiffel Tower Wedding Party, plus the speaker’s text from Oedipus Rex, the Stravinsky-Cocteau opera.”

Publisher: New Directions
Paperback: 409 pages
Illustrated

Celebrates male sexuality in a series of bawdy sketches. “The penis occupies the central place in this graphic universe with its widely varying moods, its unexpected fantasy, its humor, its sadness and its unspoken commentary on Cocteau’s life and work.” Or, as a magazine reviewer put it more bluntly: “Putting the cock in Cocteau is this new book of erotic drawings from the French Renaissance man. Long before Tom of Finland, Jean Cocteau was doodling young studs dressed as chefs, sailors and ruffians with dicks like rolling pins and some pretty bad attitudes.” GR

Publisher: Peter Owen
Hardback: 110 pages
Illustrated

Passionate adventures of a young boy attempting to realize his sexual identity in a society that disowns him. First published anonymously in 1928; purported to be semiautobiographical. Rich with erotic detail. As André Gide noted, “Some of the obscenities” are “described in the most charming manner.” Includes nudes drawn by Cocteau. GR

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 76 pages
Illustrated