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.
  1. REYES, Alfonso. 

    La saeta … 

    Rio de Janeiro, Villas Boas, 1931. 

    First edition, one of 300 copies on papel Manchester Ledger, with a signed presentation inscription on the half-title to the Cuban symbolist poet Armand Godoy (1880–1964):

    £300

  2. REYES, Alfonso (1889-1959).

    Corrected carbon typescript, signed, of an essay entitled ‘Chesterton y los titeres’ (Chesterton...

    [1950s.]

    An essay entitled ‘Chesterton y los titeres’, concerning Chesterton’s play The surprise, a religious allegory written in 1932 but first published posthumously in 1952. Reyes discusses the theological dimensions of Chesterton’s play, the use of puppets, Chesterton’s philosophy of the miracle,...

    £1000

  3. RIDOLFI, Luca Antonio. 

    Aretefila, dialogo, nel quale da una parte sono quelle ragioni allegate, le quali affermano, lo amore...

    Lyons, Guillaume Rouillé, 1562. 

    Annotated copy, once owned by a music book collector, of the third edition (first 1557) of a remarkable Renaissance philosophical dialogue on the nature of love which marked the culmination of the very divisive ‘questione d’amore’ hotly debated in sixteenth-century literature. 

    £2800

  4. RILKE, Rainer Maria. 

    Les Fenêtres.  Dix poèmes de Rainer Maria Rilke illustrés de dix eaux-fortes par Baladine. 

    Paris, Officina Sanctandreana, 1927.

    First edition, numbered 146 of 500 copies on pur fil, of a total edition of 515.  A series of ten poems in French addressed by Rilke to his lover ‘Mouky’ or ‘Baladine’ Klossowska, who herself provided the illustrations.  Elisabeth Dorothea Klossowska née Spiro (1886–1969)...

    £1200

  5. ROBBE-GRILLET, Alain.

    Topologie d’une cité fantôme.

    Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1976.

    First edition: a kind of intellectual detective story in which the reader becomes a collaborator in the solution of a crime as much his own creation as it is the author’s.

    £250

  6. ROBBE-GRILLET, Alain.

    Un Régicide.

    [Paris], Les Éditions de Minuit, [1978].

    First edition, one of 87 copies on Alfa mousse (first paper).

    £300

  7. ROBBE-GRILLET, Alain.

    Souvenirs du Triangle d’Or.

    [Paris], Les Éditions de Minuit, [1978].

    First edition, one of 87 copies on Alfa mousse (first paper).

    £350

  8. ROMANOV, Panteleimon Sergeevich.

    Domovoi [The house-sprite].

    Moscow & Leningrad, “Zemlia i Fabrika”, [1926].

    First edition, published in the ‘Worker-Peasant Library’ series, containing four short stories: Domovoi (‘The house-sprite’), Opis’ (‘The list’), Obshchestvennye raboty (‘Social work’, a fragment from Rus’), and Druzhnyi narod (‘A friendly people’).

    £350

  9. 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

  10. ROUVEYRE, André.

    Two typescript drafts of Apollinaire (1952), here titled ‘Stature d’Apollinaire. Gravures de Henri Matisse’,

    c. 1950.

    ROUVEYRE, André, and Henri MATISSE. Apollinaire. Paris, Raisons d’Etre, 1952 [1953].

    £6500

  11. ROZENGEIM, Mikhail Pavlovich.

    Stikhotvoreniia [Poems] …

    St Petersburg, Artillery Department Press, 1858.

    First edition of Rozengeim’s first book, very rare, a collection of 76 poems of patriotic martial mood. Rozengeim (1820-1887) had published his first poems in 1837 in Syn Otechestva while at Cadet School (in the footsteps of Lermontov, six years his senior), but modesty and a long military career had...

    £2000

  12. RÜCKERT, Friedrich.

    Die Weisheit des Brahmanen, ein Lehrgedicht in Bruchstücken. Erstes [– Sechstes] Bändchen.

    Leipzig, Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung, 1836-39.

    First edition of one of the most important poetical works by Rückert, here in the publisher’s attractive original paper wrappers. Rückert’s large output of poetry inspired many composers, among them Schubert (‘Du bist die Ruh’), Schumann (‘Widmung’), and Mahler (‘Kindertotenlieder’...

    £500

  13. ‘RUFIANDER, Fabius Jocosus’ [pseud. Friedrich Julius ROTTMANN]. 

    Curiöse Inaugural Disputation von dem Recht / Natur...

    ‘Teutschland, Gedruckt in denen Hundes-Tagen, 1716.’ 

    First edition, very rare, of this satirical academic disputation on melancholy, dedicated to the author’s ‘unpleasant and universally despised’ peers in the hope of cheering them up (p. [4] trans.). 

    £675

  14. SA‘DI, Abu ‘Abd Allah Musharrif al-Din (Adam OLEARIUS, translator). 

    Persianischer Rosenthal.  In welchen viel lustige...

    Schleswig, Johann Holwein for Johann Nauman in Hamburg, 1654. 

    Rare first illustrated edition, and the first edition translated by Olearius, of Sa‘di’s Gulistān or ‘Rose-garden’, with splendid engravings. 

    £6500

  15. SALINAS, Pedro.

    El Contemplado. Tema con variaciones.

    Mexico, Nueva Fioresta en la Editorial Stylo, 1946.

    First edition: a set of 15 poems written in Puerto Rico between 1943 and 1945, in which the poet addresses the sea he is watching. ‘… The speaker-poet’s search for key meanings in nature leads to the very process of its writing. As this process develops, the sea in turn moves from passive subject...

    £350

  16. SALINAS, Pedro.

    El defensor.

    Bogotá, Universidad Nacional, 1948.

    First edition of this important collection of essays by one of the outstanding members of the Generación del 27. Salinas presents a series of five essays in defence of different aspects of language.

    £550

  17. SALINGER, J.D.

    Povesti. Nad propast’iu vo rzhi [Catcher in the Rye]… Rasskazyi.

    Moscow, Molodaya Gvardiya, 1965.

    First printing in Russia and first Russian translation of Catcher in the Rye (1951), together with other works by Salinger which also appear here for the first time. The translation of Salinger’s classic novel was approved by the censor, as they considered Holden Caulfield’s dissolute coming-of-age...

    £950

  18. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN, Mikhail Evgrafovich.

    Blagonamerennyia rechi. Tom I [– II] [Well-meaning speeches. Volume I [–II]].

    St Petersburg, A. A. Kraevsky, 1876.

    First edition: a volume of social and political satires by the greatest satirist of nineteenth-century Russia. The title is ambiguous – the word ‘well-meaning’ was widely used by the administration to mean ‘loyal’, i.e. ‘politically reliable’.

    £1800

  19. SCARRON, Paul. 

    Le Marquis ridicule, ou la comtesse faite à la haste.  Comedie … Suivant la copie imprimée a Paris. 

    [Leiden, Elzevier], 1656.  [bound with:]

    First Elzevier editions, very rare, of these two plays by Scarron, pirated after the text of the first editions printed in Paris.  A finely bound volume with excellent Elzevierian provenance. 

    £800

  20. SCHNITZLER, Jean-Henri.

    Rostopchin i Kutuzov. Rossiia v 1812 godu. Perev. s predisloviem i primechaniiami A. El’nitskago [Rostopchin...

    St. Petersburg, “Luch”, 1912

    First edition in Russian of La Russie en 1812, Rostopchine et Koutousof (1863), a history of Russia during the Napoleonic wars. The generals Rostopchin and Kutuzov would appear as major characters in War and Peace (1865 7), and Schnitzler’s original appeared just as Tolstoy began work on his novel.

    £300