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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ALBERTI, Rafael.
13 Bandas y 48 estrellas. Poema del Mar Caribe.
Madrid, Manuel Altolaguirre, 1936.
First edition. ‘The thirteen poems collected in 13 bandas y 48 estrellas, first published in 1936 and later recollected in part 3 of De un momento a otro, are songs of protest against, and critical evaluations of, the role of “el imperialismo yanki”, “la diplomacia del horror”,...
£650
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LEBEDEV, V.P.
175 godovshchina Pervago Kadetskago korpusa. 17 fevralia 1907 g. [175th Anniversary of the First Corps of Cadets,...
[St Petersburg,] Press of the First Corps of Cadets, 1906.
Only edition of this collection of poems commemorating the 175th anniversary of the First Corps of Cadets, set up under Anna Ivanovna. Each of the ten ‘scenes in verse’ is narrated by a cadet, once for each Tsar under which the Corps has served.
£180
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[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
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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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LANGE, Norah.
45 Días y 30 marineros. Novela.
Buenos Aires, Editorial Tor (Colección Cometa), 1933.
First edition: Norah Lange’s second novel, which follows a 20-year old girl, Ingrid, the only woman on the ship, on a voyage from Buenos Aires to Oslo.
£100
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[TORGA, Miguel, pseud.] ROCHA, Adolpho Correia da.
Abismo. Poemas.
[Coimbra, “Atlantida”, 1932.]
First (and only) edition of one of the very rare early collections of poetry of Miguel Torga, published under his own name while he was still a medical student in Coimbra.
£3500
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KARAMZIN, Nikolai Mikhailovich.
Aglaja. Romantische und historische Erzählungen. Nach dem Russischen des Karamzin herausgegeben...
Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1819.
First appearance of a collection of eight prose pieces by Karamzin (1766–1826) in German translation. Although the work takes the title of the first Russian literary almanac, Aglaia, published by Karamzin in two volumes, 1794–5, it is actually a selection of pieces by Karamzin taken both from Aglaia...
£750
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KUSIKOV, Aleksandr Borisovich, pseud. [Boris KUSIKIAN].
Al’-barrak. Poemy.
Berlin, “Skify”, 1922.
First edition, containing five poems on Islamic themes: ‘Al-Barrak’, ‘Al-Kadr’, ‘Julfikar’, ‘Iskandar Namah’ (1921), and ‘Ko-gospel-ran’.
£150
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[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
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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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KUZMIN, Mikhail Alekseevich.
Aleksandriiskiia pesni [Alexandrian songs].
St Petersburg, “Prometei”, [1921].
First separate edition of Kuzmin’s Alexandrian Songs, originally published as part of his first collection, Nets, in 1908.
£400
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ROSSINI, Giovanni.
Alla memoria di Maria Antinori vedova del Marchese Consalvi di Macerata morta improvvisamente la sera del...
Pisa, Niccolo Capurro, 1852.
Scarce first and only edition of this poem in memory of Maria Antinori, widow of the Marchese Consalvi, on her death at the age of thirty-five, penned by the poet, playwright, historical novelist, and art historian Giovanni Rossini (1776–1855).
£275
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MOLAJONI, Bartolomeo.
Alla neogama donzella Marianna Molajoni negli Sforza, Bartolomeo Molajoni germano dirigge il seguente sonetto...
Viterbo, brothers Poggiarelli, 1811.
Seemingly unrecorded sonnet addressed to the newlywed Marianna Molajoni by her brother Bartolomeo and dedicated to the sottoprefetto of Viterbo, Giulio Zelli Pazzaglia.
£275
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[NAPOLEONIC ITALY.]
Alla società delle gentilissime signore di Moncalieri dilettanti del giuoco del tavolazzo. Sonetto bernesco-morale...
Turin, Giacomo Fea, 1799.
An unrecorded sonnet addressed to the Society of the Gentlewomen of Moncalieri, a town just south of Turin whose castle is one of the Savoy Residences, and in particular to the ‘Abbess’ of the society, by the corps of soldiers stationed in the town shortly after the Battle of Marengo.
£575
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[ALMANACK.]
Al’manakh dlia vsekh. Kniga vtoraia [Almanack for all. Second book].
St Petersburg, “Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh”, 1911.
First edition, rare, the second of two annual literary almanacks with this title, with poems by Blok, Gorodetsky and Kuzmin, and short fiction by Chulkov, Gusev, Count Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoy and Ivan Poroshin.
£200
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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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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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BELISHEVA, S. P., translator.
‘An die Fantasie, aus dem russischen.’ Manuscript on paper of an apparently unrecorded poem in...
Germany, c. 1830
A contemporary manuscript of an early 19th century Russian poem, translated into German, and signed by the, possibly pseudonymous, translator ‘Fräulein S. P. Belischef’. We have been unable to identify the original poem, in praise of poetic imagination and the heights it can attain, from which the...
£1750
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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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JUSSIEU, Laurent Pierre de.
Antoine et Maurice. Ouvrage qui a obtenu le prix proposé par la Société Royale pour l’amélioration...
Paris, L. Colas, 1821.
First edition, rare, of this unsurprisingly moralising novel by the writer, geologist, and natural historian Laurent Pierre de Jussieu (1792-1866), written in response to a competition held by the Royal Society of the Improvement of Prisons to find the best book to circulate amongst inmates.
£250