Foreign Literature
Contact Donovan Rees
This department specialises in rare and important works of French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish and South American literature from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.
Here you can find first editions and signed or presentation copies of authors as diverse as Akhmatova, Balzac, Borges, Camus, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Goethe, Goldoni, Hugo, Kafka, Leopardi, Lorca, Manzoni, Pirandello, Pushkin, Schiller, Tolstoy, Zola, and many others. Among the important works which have passed through our hands are the original working manuscript of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, now in the Pushkin House in St Petersburg, the only known copy of the first edition of Brecht's first play, Baal (1920) with his working notes, and an extraordinary collection of Pushkin first editions.
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PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.
Sochineniia A. S. Pushkina. Tom pervyi [- shestoi + Prilozheniia]… Izdanie Ia. A. Isakova [The...
St Petersburg, Eduard Prats, 1859-60.
Third collected edition of the works of Pushkin, complete with the supplement volume compiled by Grigorii Gennadi; this is the first edition to be edited by Isakov. Very rare.
£8000
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HUGO, Victor.
Notre-Dame de Paris. Par Victor Hugo. Troisième edition … Tome premier [– deuxième].
Paris, Charles Gosselin, 1831.
First edition, third issue, of Victor Hugo’s great historical novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of 275 copies printed.
£7500
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SCHUBERT, Franz, composer.
A fine contemporary volume of ten works containing eighteen Lieder including his most famous...
Vienna, 1821-1833.
A rare collection of Schubert Lieder in a contemporary binding, apparently as retailed by the Czech music publisher Berra, including three first editions.
£7500
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OSTROVSKII, Aleksandr Nikolaevich.
Bednaia Nevesta, komediia v piati deistviiakh [The poor bride, a comedy in five acts].
Moscow, Stepanova, 1852
First edition. A rare early play by one of the leading Russian playwrights of the 19th century. Ostrovsky’s second play, The Poor Bride, was first published in the literary magazine The Muscovite (edited by Mikhail Pogodin) earlier in 1852. Initially banned from production by the censor, it was one...
£6500
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FRICKER, Bernard.
Autograph working manuscript of a collection of essays and pensées entitled ‘La Marche du Jeu’.
Circa 1946-52.
An extraordinary, unique production, with seven long, unpublished observational essays by Fricker on the post-war Parisian art world, including long discussions of the work of Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Blaise Cendrars; assembled in hand-decorated chemises and a folding box designed...
£6500
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[GOETHE.]
REICHARDT, Johann Friedrich. Goethe’s Lieder, Oden, Balladen und Romanzen mit Musik von J.F. Reichardt. Erste...
Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, [1809–11].
Very rare first complete edition of Reichardt’s musical settings of Goethe’s poetry, comprising 128 settings of which thirty-nine appear here for the first time.
£6500
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SA‘DI, Abu ‘Abd Allah Musharrif al-Din (Adam OLEARIUS, translator).
Persianischer Rosenthal. In welchen viel lustige...
Schleswig, Johann Holwein for Johann Nauman in Hamburg, 1654.
Rare first illustrated edition, and the first edition translated by Olearius, of Sa‘di’s Gulistān or ‘Rose-garden’, with splendid engravings.
£6500
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ROUVEYRE, André.
Two typescript drafts of Apollinaire (1952), here titled ‘Stature d’Apollinaire. Gravures de Henri Matisse’,
c. 1950.
ROUVEYRE, André, and Henri MATISSE. Apollinaire. Paris, Raisons d’Etre, 1952 [1953].
£6500
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BERRYAT, Jean, et al., editors.
Receuil de Mémoires, ou Collection de Pièces Académiques, concernant la Médicine, l’Anatomie...
Dijon, Auxerre, Paris and Liège, F. Desventes, F. Fournier, et al., 1754-86.
The scarce first collected edition of these scientific papers from all over Europe (lacking only the last five volumes of the Partie Française), including among its contributors such famous names as Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Hevelius, De La Hire, Mariotte, Réaumur, La Condamine, Haller, Maupertuis, Boyle,...
£6000
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KAFKA, Franz.
In der Strafkolonie.
Leipzig, Kurt Wolff, 1919.
First edition, one of 1000 copies printed, of Kafka’s story In the Penal Colony.
£5500
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PISEMSKII, Aleksei Feofilaktovich.
Povesti i razskazy … v trekh chastiakh [Stories and tales … in three parts] …
Moscow, Stepanova, 1853.
Very rare first collected edition of the works of Pisemsky, including the first appearance in book form of many of his acclaimed early stories (Tiufiak (The Muff, translated into English as The Simpleton), Pitershchik (The Petersburger), Mr Batmanov, Brak...
£4800
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[MELO, Antonio de.]
La Famosa y temeraria compañia de Rompe Columnas. Traduzida, y acrescentada, por el Capitan Flegetonte, comico...
Paris, Joseph Cotterau, 1609.
First edition, rare, a loose translation by Antonio de Melo of the burlesque Della compagnia de Tagliacantoni (1601), by Tommaso Buoni.
£4500
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ERNST, Max.
Une Semaine de Bonté ou les sept éléments capitaux. Roman. Premier [–Dernier] Cahier …
Paris, Éditions Jeanne Bucher, 1934.
First edition, no. 706 of 800 copies on papier Navarre from a total edition of 816.
£4500
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DAUDET, Alphonse.
Lettres de mon Moulin. Impressions et souvenirs.
Paris, J. Hetzel et Ce, [1869].
First edition, rare, of Daudet’s Lettres de mon Moulin. These sketches of Provençal life appeared first in Le Figaro between August 1866 and October 1869, before being published in book form in 1869 and in countless editions from that time on.
£4500
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[CHIARI, Pietro (attributed).]
L’Americana ramminga cioè Memorie di donna Jnnez di Quebrada scritte da lei stessa, ed ora pubblicate...
Venice, Angelo Pasinelli, 1763.
First edition, rare, of ‘the first Italian novel with a pan-American outlook’ (Catucci, trans.).
£3750
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[TORGA, Miguel, pseud.] ROCHA, Adolpho Correia da.
Abismo. Poemas.
[Coimbra, “Atlantida”, 1932.]
First (and only) edition of one of the very rare early collections of poetry of Miguel Torga, published under his own name while he was still a medical student in Coimbra.
£3500
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BRODSKII, Iosif Aleksandrovich.
Novye stansy k Avguste. Stikhi k M.B., 1962-1982 [New stanzas to Augusta. Poems to M.B., 1962-1982]....
[Soviet Union, c. 1983].
A rare samizdat of Joseph Brodsky’s poems, prepared in typescript for clandestine circulation in the Soviet Union at a time when his works could not be published or circulated there.
£3500
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KHARMS, Daniil Ivanovich, translator. BUSCH, Wilhelm.
Plikh i Pliukh [Plisch und Plum].
Moscow, Detizdat, 1937.
First edition in book form, very rare, of Daniil Kharms’s Russian free verse translation of the children’s story by Wilhelm Busch about two mischievous dogs, second only in fame to his Max und Moritz. The translation had been first published in the children’s magazine Chizh in 1936 (nos. 8-12),...
£3000
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MATTHIEU, Pierre, et al.
Tablettes ou quatrains de la vie et de la mort. Par Pierre Matthieu, conseiller du roy.
Première [– troisième] partie … Rouen, Jacques Cailloué, 1628.
Very rare pocket-sized Rouen edition of verses on life and death by the poet and royal historiographer Pierre Matthieu (1563–1621), here printed with further poems by Guy du Faur de Pibrac, Antoine Favre and others. All early editions are extremely rare, many known in a single copy.
£3000
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ZOLA, Émile.
La Curée.
Paris, A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie, 1871.
First edition of the second novel in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, La Curée. The first six volumes of the series were printed on ordinary paper only (no grand papier issue) and are all very rare.
£3000