Je ne parle pas français was written in wartime France early in 1918, and Alpers (Life, p. 270) describes the main impulses behind it as being "the irrational loathing" K.M. had developed for the French, "her profound despair about the war and what it was doing to everything she loved," and her love for her husband, Jack. The story -- the first major narrative to be written through a persona not her own -- was the longest piece in Bliss and Other Stories, apart from Prelude, and Alpers (p. 271) considers that "it must have contributed to the stir which that book caused in 1920. Yet criticism has largely overlooked it, perhaps because it has been known, through all these years, in an expurgated version, with cuts that have blunted its meaning. The little private-press edition in which it first appeared is very rare. It has never since been reprinted, and few know the story in its intended form." JMM noted: "It was printed for private circulation by my brother and myself ... Of the 100 copies, about 20 were spoiled, and of the 80 perhaps 60 actually issued" (quoted by Kirkpatrick p. 16).