FIRST BOOK
TOLSTOY, Aleksei Nikolaevich.
Lirika.
St Petersburg, [S.M. Muller,] 1907.
8vo, pp. 75, [1, blank], iii (contents), [1 (blank)]; printed on thick paper, lightly browned; uncut in the original blue-grey paper wrappers; extremities sunned, the front cover lithographed in white to a design by K.P. van der Vliet, spine chipped at head and foot, Russian booksellers’ marks to rear cover, red crayon mark to half-title; in a folding cloth box.
Added to your basket:
Lirika.
First edition, very rare: ‘the first published work of the official novelist of the Soviet Union’ (Kilgour).
Tolstoi was only twenty-four when this collection of verse was published. It relies heavily on the Symbolists for inspiration (there is one poem entitled ‘To A. Bely’), a youthful dalliance before Tolstoi discovered his métier as a realist writer.
OCLC shows copies at the British Library, Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Harvard, and Stanford only. There is also a copy at Helsinki University Library.
Kilgour 1190; Tarasenkov, p. 373.
