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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SHKAPSKAIA, Mariia Mikhailovna.
Mater Dolorosa.
St. Petersburg, [Neopalimaia Kupina], 1921.
First edition of Maria Shkapskaya’s first book of poems. ‘You have taken to a new and very wide road. No woman before you has spoken so truthfully and in so firm a voice of her significance as a woman’ (Gorky to Shkapskaya, January 1923).
£450
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SIDOROV, Gurii Aleksandrovich.
Vedro ognia [A bucket of fire].
Moscow, [All-Russian Union of Poets, 1920].
Sidorov published only a handful of verse collections (Stilts, Skiff, both 1920; A Cloven Sun, 1921; Stalks, 1922). According to one contemporary reviewer, he was a poetic ‘builder of a second Rome’. £150
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SKABICHEVSKII, Aleksandr Mikhailovich.
Ocherki istorii russkoi tsenzury (1700-1863 g.) [Sketches on the history of Russian censorship...
St Petersburg, F. Pavlenkov, 1892.
First edition of the critic and journalist Aleksandr Skabichevsky’s (1838-1910) essays on the history of Russian censorship, which had great success among the progressive reading public. Its popularity caused the censorship authorities to ban it from public libraries.
£500
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SOLOGUB, Fedor Kuzmich, pseud. [Fedor TETERNIKOV].
Koster dorozhnyi [A wayside fire].
Moscow and Petrograd, [‘Tvorchestvo’,] 1922.
First edition, containing three cycles of verse by the leading Symbolist: ‘Vneshnii krug’ (Outer circle), ‘Put’’ (Path), and ‘Predel’ (Limit). This was one of the last collections of Sologub’s poems to appear before the state banned any further publication of his work in 1923....
£550
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SOLZHENITSYN, Aleksandr Isaevich.
Pis’mo vozhdiam Sovetskogo Soiuza [Letter to the Soviet Leaders].
Paris, YMCA, 1974.
First printed edition of a letter written by Solzhenitsyn in September 1973 to a number of upper-echelon Soviet officials - his last attempt to address the powers of the Soviet Union before his deportation in February 1974.
£150
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SOLZHENITSYN, Aleksandr Isaevich.
Amerikanskiie rechi [American speeches].
Paris, YMCA, 1975.
First edition, comprising three speeches delivered by Solzhenitsyn to the American people in 1975.
£150
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[SOUZA, Adélaïde de.]
Charles et Marie. Par l’auteur d’Adèle de Senange.
Paris, Maradan, 1802.
First edition of this novel describing British society at the beginning of the nineteenth century, written in the form of an aristocratic young Englishman’s diary.
£400
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[ST PETERSBURG SUBSCRIPTION LIBRARY.] HOLTEI, Karl Eduard von.
Lenore. Vaterländisches Schauspiel mit Gesang in drei Abtheilungen.
Berlin, Duncker and Humblot, 1829.
First edition of one of Holtei’s best-known plays, inspired by a ballad by Gottfried Bürger.
£280
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STRINDBERG, August.
Tschandala. Berättelse fran 1600-talet.
Stockholm, C. & E. Gernandts Förlags, 1897.
First Swedish edition: a Gothic tale, set in Skane thirty years after the Swedes took the province from the Danes in 1658. Tschandala (the word is taken from Nietzsche and designates the lowest caste in India) was first published in Danish translation in 1889.
£250
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STRINDBERG, Johan August.
Trefaldighetsnatten.
Stockholm, Albert Bonniers Förlag, [1909].
First separate edition of a collection of poems which was first published in the collection Fagervik och Skamsund in 1902.
£200
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TAMAMSHEV, Aleksandr Artem’evich.
Iz plamia i sveta [From the Flame and Light].
Petrograd, [R. Golike & A. Vil’borg,] 1918.
First edition. The title is taken from a poem by Lermontov (Est’ rechi—znachen’e / Temno il’ nichtozhno … ‘There are speeches – whose meaning / Is obscure or insignificant / But it is impossible to hear them without being moved … From the flame and light / The born word...
£250
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TARSIS, Valerii Iakovlevich.
Skazanie o sinei mukhe. Krasnoe i chernoe [The legend of the bluebottle. Red and black].
Frankfurt am Main, Posev, 1963.
First edition in Russian of Tarsis’ first work to be published abroad, a political allegory of a philosopher who kills a fly and then asks himself why he cannot likewise kill people who get in his way.
£90
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TASSO, Torquato.
Aminta; Favola boscareccia …
In Glasgua, Della Stampa di Roberto ed Andrea Foulis, 1753.
First Foulis Press edition of Tasso’s famous pastoral verse play of 1573, an attractive production with plates from a miniature French edition by the French artist Sebastien le Clerc, acquired by Robert Foulis on his European travels.
£125
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TOLSTOY, Count Aleksei Konstantinovich.
Kniaz’ Serebrianyi. Povest’ vremen Ioanna Groznago. S predisloviem kn. D. N. Tserteleva....
Moscow, V. G. Got’e [Gautier], 1892.
First edition thus, printed on papier vélin and signed by the publisher, one of a number of bibliophile editions of Russian classics brought out by Gautier in the 1890s. Copies were also printed on japon.
£1600
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TOLSTOY, Count Aleksei Konstantinovich.
Smert’ Ioanna Groznago, tragediia v piati deistviiakh [The Death of Ivan the Terrible,...
St Petersburg, Naval Ministry Press, 1866.
First edition: the first in the great trilogy of plays by the foremost Russian historical dramatist. It was translated into English verse, ‘with the author’s permission’, in 1869.
£2000
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[TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.] ORLOV, Nikolai.
Russkie Muzhiki. Kartiny khudozhnika N. Orlova, s predisloviem Leva Nikolaevicha Tolstogo...
St Petersburg, R. Golik & A. Vilborg, 1909.
First and only edition of this album of nine black and white reproductions of folk-art paintings by the peasant artist Nikolai Orlov, prefaced by an 8-page introduction by Tolstoy. The realistic portrayal of Russian society, especially of the peasantry, was a cause beloved by Tolstoy, and is a key feature...
£1200
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TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.
Zhivoi trup. Drama v 6 deistviiakh i 12 kartinakh [A Living Corpse. A drama in 6 acts and 12 scenes].
Moscow, A. Ia. Petrov, [1911].
One of the earliest printings of Tolstoy’s Living Corpse, one of a number of editions in 1911, the year it was first staged, posthumously, at the Moscow Arts Theatre.
£2750
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TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.
Khoziain i rabotnik. Povest’ [Master and Man. A Story].
St Petersburg, V.S. Balashev and Co., 10 March 1895.
One of the earliest printings of one of Tolstoy’s greatest late short stories, revolving around a Damascene moment in the life of an avaricious landowner.
£3000
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TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.
Posmertnyia khudozhestvennyia proizvedeniia… pod redaktsii V Chertkova. Tom I [-III] [Posthumous...
[Moscow], A.L. Tolstoy, [1912].
A reprint, in slightly smaller format than the first edition of 1911, of Tolstoy’s posthumous works, which included the first appearance of many important pieces: ‘Hadji Murad, as well as The Memoirs of a Madman and The Devil, was published only in 1911, in the collected edition...
£800
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[TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.] BIRIUKOV, Pavel Ivanovich (editor).
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi. Biografiia. Sostavil P. Biriukov...
Moscow, Pechkovsky, ‘Posrednik’, 1906[-8].
First edition, rare, of the first authorised biography of Tolstoy (then aged seventy-eight), by his friend, secretary and disciple Pavel Biriukov (1860–1931), drawing on much unpublished archival material and written in personal consultation with Tolstoy over a period of at least six years.
£1800