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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MELECRINIS, Maria Teresa.
Le voci del cuore a Maria Teresa Melecrinis dei baroni di Ioppolo e Coccorino che a di 6 luglio 1846...
Naples, stamperia dell' Iride, 1846.
Very rare collection of odes and sonnets composed to mark the entry of Maria Teresa Melecrinis into the Benedictine monastery of San Paolo at Sorrento.
£175
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[MELO, Antonio de.]
La Famosa y temeraria compañia de Rompe Columnas. Traduzida, y acrescentada, por el Capitan Flegetonte, comico...
Paris, Joseph Cotterau, 1609.
First edition, rare, a loose translation by Antonio de Melo of the burlesque Della compagnia de Tagliacantoni (1601), by Tommaso Buoni.
£4500
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MÉRIMÉE, Prosper.
La Chambre bleue. Nouvelle dédiée à Madame de la Rhune.
Brussels, Librairie de la Place de la Monnaie, 1872.
Very rare first procurable edition of Mérimée’s novella La Chambre bleue, one of 129 copies printed. The first edition (‘Biarritz, 1866’ = Paris, Jules Claye, 1871) was published in only three copies.
£750
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MESHCHERSKY, Elim Petrovich, Prince.
Les roses noires par le prince Élim Mestscherskï.
Paris, Amyot, 1845.
First edition of this posthumous collection, which includes a short dramatisation of Pushkin’s The Gypsies, ‘un charmant poëme d’Alexandre Pouschkinn, le grand écrivain que pleure la Russie’.
£600
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MILHAUD, Darius.
Le boeuf sur le toit, ou The nothing doing bar. Farce imaginée et réglée par Jean Cocteau – costumes de G....
Paris, Editions de la Sirène, 1920.
First edition of Milhaud’s Le boeuf sur le toit, Op. 58 (The ox on the roof, or The nothing-doing bar), a surrealist ballet-farce which became extremely popular in 1920s Paris.
£2400
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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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MONTESQUIEU, Charles de Secondat.
Histoire véritable publiée d’après un nouveau manuscrit avec une introduction et des notes...
Bordeaux, G. Gounouilhou, 1902.
Second edition of Montesquieu’s philosophical, quasi-oriental tale, a prelude to his great work L’Esprit des lois. Written in the 1730s and again in 1754, and influenced by Lucian and the 18th-century vogue for oriental fiction, the Histoire véritable remained unpublished until 1892. This 1902 second...
£100
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MORENO VILLA, José.
Carambas. (I.a serie [– 3.a serie]).
Madrid, Ediciones Posibles, 1931.
First edition of the complete series of Moreno Villa’s Carambas. The poet and art historian José Moreno Villa was born in Malaga in 1887 (d. 1955). He belonged to the poetic generation intermediate between that of ’98 and that of ’27; his major influence was Juan Ramón Jiménez. His autobiography...
£450
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MOROZOV, Mikhail Mikhailovich.
O’tao. Drama v 2-kh deistviiakh [Drama in Two Acts].
Moscow, Sozvezdie, 1921.
First edition of a short play, set in Japan, by the Shakespeare scholar and translator M.M. Morozov (1897–1952). It was premiered on 15 June 1921.
£100
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MOROZOV, Nikolai Aleksandrovich.
Zvezdnyia pesni … [Celestial Songs].
Moscow, “Zadruga”, 1920.
First published in 1910, this second, enlarged edition is the ‘first complete edition’ of Morozov’s poetry, bringing the collection up-to-date (i.e. 1919). We offer volume I; a second appeared in 1921.
£120
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[MURAT, J.-B. de.]
La destinée d’une jolie femme, poème érotique, en six chants, par J.B… de M…
Paris, Langlois for Mongie, An XI (1803).
First and only edition, very scarce, of this humorous moralising tale of love and loss in verse, intended for a female readership and hidden under the ‘transparent veil’ of erotic poetry.
£650
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MUSIL, Robert.
Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männer. Posse in drei Akten.
Berlin, Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1924.
Rare first edition of Musil’s (1880–1942) early farce, featuring an abduction, extramarital affairs, and a staged murder.
£500
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MUSSET, Alfred de, and Nikolai Porfir’evich GREKOV, translator.
Rolla, poema … perevod N.P. Grekova [Rolla,...
Moscow, F.B. Miller, 1864.
First edition in Russian of Musset’s Rolla (1833), a poetic reinterpretation of the Don Juan myth, translated by the poet Nikolai Porfir’evich Grekov (1810–1866).
£1750
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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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NERVAL, Gérard de.
Lorely, souvenirs d’Allemagne.
Paris, D. Giraud et J. Dagneau, 1852.
First edition, second issue, of a collection of Nerval’s writings on Germany. German Romanticism had a great influence on Nerval, and he was drawn to the country, visiting it seven times. At the age of 20, he published a translation of Faust which Goethe himself praised. Lorely opens with a long preface...
£800
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NICOLAI, [Christoph] Friedrich.
The Life and Opinions of Sebaldus Nothanker. Translated from the German … by Thomas Dutton,...
London: Printed by C. Lowndes, and sold by H.D. Symonds, 1798.
First edition in English, very scarce, of Nicolai’s Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker (1773–6), ‘probably the literary bestseller of the German Enlightenment’ (Selwyn), translated into many languages and much re-printed. It is sometimes considered...
£2750
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[OCCUPIED FRANCE]
Finis les mauvais jours! Papa gagne de l’argent en Allemagne! [The bad days are over! Daddy is earning money...
[Paris], Office de Répartition de l´Affichage, 1943.
Rare, encouraging the voluntary relocation of French workers from impoverished and semi-starved France to Germany factories.
£300
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OHNET, Georges.
The Battles of Life. The Ironmaster. From the French of Georges Ohnet … by Lady G[eorgiana] O[sborne]. Authorized...
London: Wyman & Sons … 1884.
First edition in English. Le maître de forges (1882), one of a series of novels published by Ohnet under the title ‘Les batailles de la vie’, was a bestseller of French nineteenth-century sentimental fiction, and no less successful in England. Another English translation, by Ernest Vizetelly,...
£450
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OLESHA, Iurii Karlovich.
Zavist’. Roman, s risunkami Natana Al’tman [Envy. A novel, with drawings by Nathan Altman].
Moscow-Leningrad, “Zemlia Fabrika, [1928].
First edition of this famous short satirical novel which ‘catapulted Olesha into the first rank of Soviet writers’ (Terras). It was fêted by both Soviet and émigré critics and established the young writer’s reputation almost overnight. Olesha later adapted it as a play, Zagovor...
£3000
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OLESHA, Iurii Karlovich.
Zapiski pisatelia [Notes of a writer].
Moscow, [“Ogonek” for] Journalists Union, 1931.
Apparent first edition of Olesha’s autobiographical sketch.
£150