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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PILNIAK, Boris, pseud. [Boris Andreevich VOGAU].
Povesti o chernom khlebe [Stories about black bread].
Moscow & St. Petersburg, “Krug”, 1923.
First edition, comprising two short stories, ‘Volki’ (Wolves) and ‘Chernyi Khleb’ (Black bread), written in Kolomna in 1922-3.
£300
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PILNIAK, Boris, pseud. [Boris Andreevich VOGAU].
Rasplesnutoe vremia. Rasskazy [Spilled time. Stories].
Moscow and Leningrad, Gosizdat, 1927.
First edition of a collection of short stories previously published only in periodicals (in 1925-7); this collection represents a shift in Pilniak’s style towards social realism – most of the stories are grouped under the general heading ‘Recurring tales’.
£350
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‘PILNIAK, Boris’, [pseud. Boris Andreevich VOGAU].
Kamni i Korni [Rocks and roots].
Moscow, SovLit, 1934.
First edition in book form, a strange modernist travelogue in which Pilniak critically reworks his earlier Korni iaponskago solntsa (Roots of the Japanese Sun, 1927).
£300
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PILNIAK, Boris, pseud. [Boris Andreevich VOGAU].
Shtoss v zhizn’ [Shtoss in life].
Berlin, Petropolis, [1929].
First edition, a collection of three stories.
£250
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‘PILNIAK, Boris’ [pseud. Boris Andreevich VOGAU].
Kitaiskaia povest’ [A Chinese tale].
Moscow and Leningrad, Gosizdat, 1928.
First edition. A visit to the Far East in 1927 gave Pilniak material for a number of works, such as the present one, but controversy back in Russia grew over an earlier story, Povest’ nepogashennoi luny (The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon, 1926, which had strongly suggested that...
£350
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[PIRANDELLO, Luigi.]
LO VECCHIO MUSTI, Manlio. Bibliografia di Pirandello.
Verona, Mondadori, 1937.
First edition of this authoritative bibliography of Pirandello, published just a year after his death. It includes a long introductory essay by Massimo Bontempelli.
£100
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PISEMSKII, Aleksei Feofilaktovich.
Povesti i razskazy … v trekh chastiakh [Stories and tales … in three parts] …
Moscow, Stepanova, 1853.
Very rare first collected edition of the works of Pisemsky, including the first appearance in book form of many of his acclaimed early stories (Tiufiak (The Muff, translated into English as The Simpleton), Pitershchik (The Petersburger), Mr Batmanov, Brak...
£4800
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PISEMSKII, Aleksei Feofilaktovich.
Ocherki iz krest’ianskago byta [Sketches from Peasant Life].
St Petersburg, [A. Dmitriev,] 1856.
First edition: ‘one of Pisemsky’s most universally acclaimed books’ (Moser, p. 54) and the one which cemented his reputation as ‘a chronicler of the life of the common people’ (Terras).
£3000
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PITTER, Přemysl.
Domovu i exilu [Home and Exile].
London, Čechoslovák-FCI, [1956].
First editions, association copies, of a series of radio transcripts by the humanitarian Protestant lay preacher and educator Přemysl Pitter (1895–1976), often described as the ‘forgotten Czech Schindler’, owned by the Czech-Jewish poet, novelist, and Holocaust survivor H.G. Adler.
£850
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[POETRY.]
‘Trattato della [poesia Toscana]’.
[Asti?, 1780-1782.]
A manuscript treatise on the method of composing poetry in Italian, with numerous examples from renowned authors and eight apparently unpublished poems about horse-racing, with references to Arabian, Sardinian, English, and African horses, as well as to a firework display.
£750
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[POETS’ GUILD.]
Tsekh Poetov I [ and II-III].
Berlin, S. Efron, 1922[-3].
First edition. The first Poets’ Guild had been formed in 1911 with members including Gumilev, Gorodetsky and Mandelstam, the core of whom became known as the Acmeists.
£1250
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[PORCELAIN.] KUKHNOV, A.F.
Recueil de marques de fabriques de porcelaine Russes.
[Paris, Imprimerie de Vaugirard, 1927.]
Rare first and only edition of Kukhnov’s descriptive catalogue of eminent Russian porcelain factories, comprising brief histories of the factories accompanied by reproductions of their various factory marks.
£600
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[POUND.]
FROBENIUS, Leo. Il Liuto di Gassire. Legenda Africana con una nota di Ezra Pound.
Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1961].
First edition, translated into Italian from the German by Siegfried Walter di Rachewiltz, Pound’s grandson (b. 1947), and with a ten-page note by Pound. A presentation copy, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey Bridson with the compliments of Siegfried W. de Rachewiltz / Brunnenburg 30. 5. 61’.
£100
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[POUND, Ezra.]
CONTINO, Vittorugo, photographer. Prospectus for: Ezra Pound in Italia, dai Canti Pisani. Spots & Dots.
Venice, Gianfranco Ivancich, [1970?].
Prospectus in English for Gallup B100, comprising a brief introduction by Pound, and photographs of Pound and Venice, extracts from The Pisan Cantos and some answers by Pound to questions by Pasolini and Ronsisvalle.
£10
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POUND, Ezra, and Ernest FENELLOSA.
Introduzione ai Nô, con un drama in un atto di Motokiyo: Kagekiyo.
Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1958].
Third edition, translations of Pound’s ‘Introduction’ and one play from Certain Noble Plays of Japan by his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. This third edition added ‘Un intervallo di 40 anni’ by Pound, dated November 1958.
£30
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POUND, Ezra, and Giovanni GIUDICI, translator.
H.S. Mauberley, tradotto di Giovanni Giudici con tre disegni inedita...
Milan, all’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1959.
First edition, no. 141 of 1000 copies, a parallel-text Italian translation of Pound’s modernist masterpiece Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920).
£100
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[PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.] BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich (editor).
Pis’ma Pushkina i k Pushkinu. Novye materialy,...
Moscow, Press of the Society for the Distribution of Useful Books, 1903.
First edition of this collection of Pushkin’s correspondence, edited by the Symbolist poet and critic Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873–1924); most of the contents are published from the original manuscripts.
£900
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[PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.] BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich (editor).
Litseiskie stikhi Pushkina, po rukopisiam Moskovskago...
Moscow, “Skorpion”, 1907.
First edition – the symbolist poet Valery Briusov’s critical notes to volume I of the Academy edition of Pushkin’s Works (1899), which had included his Lycée poems 1812-17.
£350
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PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich. DUPONT, H. (translator).
Oeuvres choisies... traduites pour la première fois en français... Tome...
St Petersburg, chez Fd. Bellizard et Cie; Paris, Au comptoir des Imprimeurs-unis, 1847.
First collected edition of Pushkin in French, preceded in French translation only by some individual poems and stories, and a translation of The Queen of Spades in 1843. This is one of the earliest major collections of Pushkin to appear outside Russia.
£2500
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PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.
Sochineniia A. S. Pushkina. Tom pervyi [- shestoi + Prilozheniia]… Izdanie Ia. A. Isakova [The...
St Petersburg, Eduard Prats, 1859-60.
Third collected edition of the works of Pushkin, complete with the supplement volume compiled by Grigorii Gennadi; this is the first edition to be edited by Isakov. Very rare.
£8000