Second row: Abstract Meursault forms the theme for these two covers, a 1983 Penguin UK paperback ( left), and the first US edition hardcover published by Alfred A. Knopf ( right).

The first print run consisted of 4,400 copies, a signed copy of which will fetch around $50,000. Top row: Albert Camus | The first French language edition of the novel as published by Gallimard. The novel sold slowly at first-WWII may have had something to do with that-but became a perennial best seller in the decades that followed, assigned in many High School and University-level survey literature classes as its themes of existential ennui and alienation often resonates strongly with young adult readers, many of whom may have first encountered Meursault, the novel’s protagonist, in the pages between the covers presented here.

Gilbert’s translation was the standard until 1986, when Penguin UK published a translation by Joseph Laredo, followed by Sandra Smith’s translation in 2012, both maintaining The Outsider title, while an American English tranlation by Matthew Ward appeared from Vintage Books in 1988. Knopf kept the original, literal translation of the the title, The Stranger, while in the UK, publisher Hamish Hamilton changed the title to The Outsider, as it was deemed, “more striking and appropriate”. It was first published in Occupied Paris, 1942, with the first English language translation, by British author Stuart Gilbert, appearing in 1946.

The Many Faces (and Book Covers) of L’ÉtrangerĪfter Les Misérables, L’Étranger, Albert Camus’s masterpiece may be the second most famous of French novels, yet, at only 144 pages (about one-tenth the page count for Les Mis), it is certainly more widely read.

The stranger albert camus cover