[ST PETERSBURG SUBSCRIPTION LIBRARY.] HOLTEI, Karl Eduard von.
Lenore. Vaterländisches Schauspiel mit Gesang in drei Abtheilungen.
Berlin, Duncker and Humblot, 1829.
8vo, pp. [2], 165, [1]; some foxing, but a good copy in contemporary quarter calf and marbled boards, original printed front cover label, later green printed label to rear cover in Russian, French and German from the Subscription Library of Countess Modène.
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Lenore. Vaterländisches Schauspiel mit Gesang in drei Abtheilungen.
First edition of one of Holtei’s best-known plays, inspired by a ballad by Gottfried Bürger.
This copy comes from the ‘Subscription Library of German and French Books near the Kazansky Bridge, Catherine [now Griboedov] Canal, on the corner of Italianskaia Street, at the house of the Countess Modène’. Charles-Louis-François Gabriel [Gavriil Karlovich] de Raimond-Mormoiron, comte de Modène (1774-1833), of an aristocratic family from Provence, had come to Russia after the French Revolution, taking Russian citizenship in 1798. He was master of the hunt at the Russian court; his wife, Elizaveta Nikolaevna (née Saltykov, 1773-1852), was a Dame of the Order of St Catherine and also appeared frequently at court. The library, which occupied a prestigious location just off Nevsky Prospect, was possibly set up after her husband’s death. Their four daughters, Sofia, Maria, Adelaida and Alexandra, (born c. 1803-7) all married into the Russian aristocracy, and there appears to be a passing reference to the latter three in Gogol’s Dead Souls.
Wilpert/Gühring 17.
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