OZEROV, Vladislav Aleksandrovich.
Sochineniia … Chast’ pervaia [–vtoraia] [Works … Part one [–two]].
St Petersburg, Imperial Theatre, 1817 [-1816].
Two vols in one, 4to, pp. [2], xlvi, [10], 145, [1]; [10], 158; with a frontispiece portrait, a half-title to the second part, and three engraved plates; some spotting, but a very good copy in contemporary mottled calf, blind-tooled border, spine gilt, joints cracked or cracking.
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Sochineniia … Chast’ pervaia [–vtoraia] [Works … Part one [–two]].
One of two rival collected editions published after Ozerov’s death in 1816, rare, including the first appearance of the author’s poetry and his last tragedy Poliksena.
This is the grander and fuller edition, with a more generous format and more illustrations, and includes his four major tragedies, Edip v Afanakh [Oedipus in Athens] (1805), the Ossian-inspired Fingal’ (1807), Dimitrii Donskoi (1807, a patriotic play first staged days after the battle of Eylau), and the unsuccessful Poliksena, plus a selection of poetry and an introductory essay ‘On the life and works of V.A. Ozerov’ by Prince Pyotr Andreevich Viazemsky. A list of subscribers at the end of volume I includes numerous princes, Pushkin’s friend Aleksei Olenin, the poet Nikolai Gnedich, and the writer Nikolai Grech, as well as actors, booksellers, and other figures from Tiflis to Kharkov. The other edition, published 1816-1819 by Glazunov, was in four octavo parts with a single engraved portrait and did not include the poems; the volume with Poliksena appeared in 1819.
Ozerov (1769–1816) was the most popular Russian dramatist of the early nineteenth century, marrying the French classical and pre-Romantic traditions, though he did not escape ridicule by Griboedov.
Kilgour 808.
