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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BLOK, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich.
O sovremennom sostoianii russkogo simvolizma [On the current state of Russian symbolism].
St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1921.
First edition, a lecture read by Blok in April 1910 before the Society of Zealots of the Artistic Word, a discussion group formed by Gumilev, Blok and others in 1909.
£150
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BLOK, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich.
Vozmezdie [Retribution].
St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1922.
First edition of Blok’s verse epic, on which he worked from 1910 until his death in 1921. Fragments were published during his lifetime, but the poem did not appear in its entirety until this posthumous edition.
£350
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[BLOK, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich.] ASHUKIN, Nikolai Sergeevich.
Aleksandr Blok. Sinkhronisticheskie tablitsy zhizni i tvorchestva...
Moscow, “Novaia Moskva”, 1923.
First edition: a chronology of Blok’s life and a bibliography of his works, together with a list of secondary literature.
£300
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BOCCACCIO, Giovanni, and Mikhail Alekseevich KUZMIN (translator).
Bokkachch’o. Fiametta. Per. M. Kuzmina [Boccaccio....
St Petersburg, M.G. Kornfel’d, 1913.
Extremely rare first edition of Kuzmin’s translation of Boccaccio’s Fiammetta.
£1200
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BOLAÑO, Roberto.
2666.
Barcelona, Editorial Anagrama, [2004].
First edition of the Chilean writer’s last novel, the major preoccupation of the last five years of his life. 2666, a cryptic, stylistically rich and violent tale centred around murders of young women in Cuidad Juarez (Santa Teresa in the novel), was published a year after Bolaño’s death...
£500
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BRANDT, Johann Daniel und Georg Karl.
Opfer de Lieb’ und Freundschaft. Dargebracht dem Konigl. Preuss. Kriegsrath Herrn herrn...
Berlin, Wilhelm Dieterici, [1790].
A luxurious and unusual production, both printed and bound in silk, a commemorative poem commissioned as a special birthday gift by King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia for his military adviser Friedrich Moritz Helmbrecht (1744-97).
£400
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BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich.
Kratkii kurs nauki o stikhe ... Chast’ pervaia. Chastnaia metrika i ritmika russkago iazyka [A...
Moscow, “Al’tsiona”, 1919.
Very rare first edition, the only chapter to be published of Briusov’s ‘short course in the study of poetry’.
£120
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BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich.
Mig. Stikhi 1920–1921 g. [The Instant. Verses of 1920–1921].
Berlin and St Petersburg, Z.I. Grzhebin, 1922.
First edition. The post-Revolutionary period, spanning the years shortly before his death in 1924, was one of intense poetic activity for Bryusov. Of the work from this period, ‘several poems are devoted to recent history and current events – to the Revolution, the famine years, the death...
£200
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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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BULGAKOV, Mikhail Afanas’evich.
Dni Turbinykh. Posledenie dni (A.S. Pushkin) [The Days of the Turbins. The Last Days (A.S....
Moscow, “Iskusstvo”, 1955.
First complete edition. The Days of the Turbins was Bulgakov’s most important play, and the one on which his lasting reputation as a dramatist depends.
£1500
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BULYGIN, Pavel Petrovich.
Iantari. Stikhotvoreniia [Ambers. Poems.]
Riga, M. Didkovska, [1937].
First and only edition of a posthumous collection by the émigré poet Pavel Petrovich Bulygin (1896-1936).
£300
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BUQUOY, Georg Franz August de Longueval, Freiherr von Vaux, Graf von.
Anregungen für philosophisch-wissenschaftliche Forschung...
Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1825.
First edition, rare, of a comprehensive discussion by the author of his personal philosophy, with c. 50 pages of his poetry thrown in at the end for good measure. Samuel Hahnemann refers to the work in Die chronischen Krankheiten (1828–30), calling Buquoy a ‘deep-thinking, many-sided scholar and...
£950
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BUTURLIN, Petr Dmitrievich, Count.
Sonety. Posmertnoe izdanie [Sonnets. Posthumous edition].
[Kiev, Frontskevich,] 1895.
First edition: fifty-seven sonnets by the diplomat and poet Count Pyotr Buturlin (1859-1895).
£1200
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CABRERA INFANTE, Guillermo.
Tres tristes tigres.
Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1967.
First edition of Cabrera Infante’s first major novel: a key work in the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s and a landmark in Cuban literature.
£750
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CARO, Annibale.
Rime del commendatore Annibal Caro. Col privilegio di N.S. PP. Pio V. et dell’illustrissima signoria di...
Venice, Aldus Manutius the Younger, 1569.
First edition of the poetry of Annibale Caro, offering a scathing yet humorous critique of his greatest poetic rival, Ludovico Castelvetro.
£650
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CARPENTIER, Alejo.
El Reino de este mundo (relato).
Lima, Talleres Gráficos Torres Aguirres, [1959].
Carpentier’s second novel, re-published on the occasion of the ‘1er Festival del Libro Cubano’ in 1959. First published in Mexico in 1949, the novel treats slave uprisings in 18th century Haiti. The original introduction (reprinted here) contains the first mention of the concept of ‘magic realism’,...
£100
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CASANOVA, Giacomo.
Kazanova. Memuary [Casanova. Memoirs] …
St Petersburg, V. I. Gubinsky, 1887.
Very rare first edition in Russian of Casanova’s famous Histoire de ma vie, published as part of Vladimir Chuiko’s series ‘European Writers and Thinkers’. The anonymous translation, made presumably from the German version published in the 1820s, or the French back-translation which followed...
£1750
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CELAN, Paul.
Von Schwelle zu Schwelle. Gedichte.
Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, [1955].
First edition of Celan’s second collection of poems. Dedicated to his wife Gisèle, it is Celan’s first book to arise wholly from Paris.
£400
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CERNUDA, Luis.
Las Nubes (1937-1938).
Buenos Aires, Colección Rama de Oro, 1943.
First edition: a collection of poems written during Cernuda's stay in England, focusing on the tragic destiny of the Spaniard. The poems carry a sense of heightened dislocation and despair, and the use of dramatic monologue is prevalent as Cernuda begins to adopt religious themes in the face of the ravages...
£1000
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CHACHIKOV, Aleksandr Mikhailovich.
Chai-Khane.
Moscow, Moscow Guild of Poets, 1927.
First edition of a collection which highlights the poet’s interest in the Caucasus and other (non-Russian) parts of the Soviet Union, often employing foreign words in the poems.
£100