First edition of the first two parts of an epic novel, which describes rural life in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Three more parts came out over the next 12 years; complete copies are very rare.

‘Of the landowning gentry and without much success before the Revolution, Romanov [1885–1938] succeeded in becoming one of the most successful Soviet writers of the 1920s and 1930s. He won fame mostly with his satirical stories of the NEF period, in which he exposed the seamy sides of the new society’ (Terras).

OCLC lists copies of these first two parts at Indiana, Kansas, and Dartmouth College, and a copy of the second part only at Harvard.

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