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Foreign Literature

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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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  1. ‘PILNIAK, Boris’ [pseud. Boris Andreevich VOGAU].

    Kitaiskaia povest’ [A Chinese tale].

    Moscow and Leningrad, Gosizdat, 1928.

    First edition. A visit to the Far East in 1927 gave Pilniak material for a number of works, such as the present one, but controversy back in Russia grew over an earlier story, Povest’ nepogashennoi luny (The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon, 1926, which had strongly suggested that...

    £350

  2. [PIRANDELLO, Luigi.]

    LO VECCHIO MUSTI, Manlio. Bibliografia di Pirandello.

    Verona, Mondadori, 1937.

    First edition of this authoritative bibliography of Pirandello, published just a year after his death. It includes a long introductory essay by Massimo Bontempelli.

    £100

  3. 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

  4. PISEMSKII, Aleksei Feofilaktovich.

    Ocherki iz krest’ianskago byta [Sketches from Peasant Life].

    St Petersburg, [A. Dmitriev,] 1856.

    First edition: ‘one of Pisemsky’s most universally acclaimed books’ (Moser, p. 54) and the one which cemented his reputation as ‘a chronicler of the life of the common people’ (Terras).

    £3000

  5. PLANAS, D. Eusebio.

    Historia de una mujer. Album de cincuenta cromos.

    Barcelona, Juan Aleu y Fugarull, 1880.

    First edition. A chronicle in pictures of the life of a beautiful modern woman, and her adventures and misadventures with men: in front of fashionable Madrid shop-fronts, in her boudoir, on the balcony, on the stage and in the dressing-room, at balls and dinner parties, in a train, the Alps, the 1878...

    £2000

  6. [POETRY.] 

    ‘Trattato della [poesia Toscana]’. 

    [Asti?, 1780-1782.] 

    A manuscript treatise on the method of composing poetry in Italian, with numerous examples from renowned authors and eight apparently unpublished poems about horse-racing, with references to Arabian, Sardinian, English, and African horses, as well as to a firework display. 

    £750

  7. [POETS’ GUILD.]

    Tsekh Poetov I [ and II-III].

    Berlin, S. Efron, 1922[-3].

    First edition. The first Poets’ Guild had been formed in 1911 with members including Gumilev, Gorodetsky and Mandelstam, the core of whom became known as the Acmeists.

    £1250

  8. [PORCELAIN.] KUKHNOV, A.F.

    Recueil de marques de fabriques de porcelaine Russes.

    [Paris, Imprimerie de Vaugirard, 1927.]

    Rare first and only edition of Kukhnov’s descriptive catalogue of eminent Russian porcelain factories, comprising brief histories of the factories accompanied by reproductions of their various factory marks.

    £600

  9. [POUND.]

    FROBENIUS, Leo. Il Liuto di Gassire. Legenda Africana con una nota di Ezra Pound.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1961].

    First edition, translated into Italian from the German by Siegfried Walter di Rachewiltz, Pound’s grandson (b. 1947), and with a ten-page note by Pound. A presentation copy, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey Bridson with the compliments of Siegfried W. de Rachewiltz / Brunnenburg 30. 5. 61’.

    £100

  10. POUND, Ezra, and Ernest FENELLOSA.

    Introduzione ai Nô, con un drama in un atto di Motokiyo: Kagekiyo.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1958].

    Third edition, translations of Pound’s ‘Introduction’ and one play from Certain Noble Plays of Japan by his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. This third edition added ‘Un intervallo di 40 anni’ by Pound, dated November 1958.

    £30

  11. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.] BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich (editor).

    Pis’ma Pushkina i k Pushkinu. Novye materialy,...

    Moscow, Press of the Society for the Distribution of Useful Books, 1903.

    First edition of this collection of Pushkin’s correspondence, edited by the Symbolist poet and critic Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873–1924); most of the contents are published from the original manuscripts.

    £900

  12. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.] BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich (editor).

    Litseiskie stikhi Pushkina, po rukopisiam Moskovskago...

    Moscow, “Skorpion”, 1907.

    First edition – the symbolist poet Valery Briusov’s critical notes to volume I of the Academy edition of Pushkin’s Works (1899), which had included his Lycée poems 1812-17.

    £350

  13. PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich. DUPONT, H. (translator).

    Oeuvres choisies... traduites pour la première fois en français... Tome...

    St Petersburg, chez Fd. Bellizard et Cie; Paris, Au comptoir des Imprimeurs-unis, 1847.

    First collected edition of Pushkin in French, preceded in French translation only by some individual poems and stories, and a translation of The Queen of Spades in 1843. This is one of the earliest major collections of Pushkin to appear outside Russia.

    £2500

  14. 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

  15. PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.

    Bumagi … Vypusk pervyi [all published] [Papers … First Part].

    Moscow, University Press (M. Katkov), 1881.

    First edition of Pushkin’s collected papers, edited by P.I. Bartenev, the first (and at that time only) person allowed access to them.

    £1200

  16. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.]

    Al’bom Pushkinskoi Iubileinoi Vystavki v Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk v S. Peterburg, Mai 1899...

    Moscow, K. A. Fisher, 1899.

    The catalogue of an exhibition to celebrate the centenary of Pushkin’s birth, held at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. The album is edited by L. N. Maikov and B. L. Modzalevsky, and contains 250 photographic reproductions of portraits, drawings, engravings, sculpture, manuscripts, etc.

    £800

  17. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.]

    Iubileinyi Al’bom v pamiat’ stoletiia so dnia rozhdeniia poeta 1799–1899 [A Jubilee Album...

    St Petersburg, A. F. Marx, 1899

    First edition of an album in celebration of Pushkin, published as a supplement in the literary magazine Niva; the contents comprise the eulogistic poem ‘Pushkin’s Muse’ by Semyon Frug, a long and well-illustrated ‘Life of Pushkin’ by V. A. Svetlov, a dissertation on Pushkin’s works, ordered...

    £1500

  18. PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.

    Můj rodokmen [My genealogy].

    [Prague, Průmyslová tiskárna, 1937.]

    First edition, privately printed, of this Czech translation of Pushkin’s Moia rodoslovnaia (‘My genealogy’, 1830), the great Russian poet’s defence of his ancestry against some recent racial slurs. The fine illustrations are by Karel Svolinský (1896–1986), who is best known...

    £250

  19. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich (contributor).]

    Сѣверные цвѣты на 1825 годъ [Severnye tsvety na 1825...

    St Petersburg, Department of Public Education, 1825 [Moscow, Universitetskaia tip., 1881].

    Rare nineteenth-century Moscow reprint of the exceptionally rare first issue of Northern flowers, one of the most celebrated Russian literary anthologies, edited by Pushkin’s great friend Delvig. The 1825 issue included the first appearance of four passages from part ii of Eugene...

    £1750

  20. [PUSHKIN, Alexander.]

    LÉNSTRÖM, Carl Julius. Alexander Puschkin. Rysslands Byron. Ett Skaldeporträtt … första [-sednare]...

    Uppsala, Leffler och Sebell; 1841.

    First edition, very rare, of a study of Pushkin by the Swedish literary historian C. J. Lénström delivered at the Gustavian Auditorium on 8 December 1841.

    £350