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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BRANDT, Johann Daniel und Georg Karl.
Opfer de Lieb’ und Freundschaft. Dargebracht dem Konigl. Preuss. Kriegsrath Herrn herrn...
Berlin, Wilhelm Dieterici, [1790].
A luxurious and unusual production, both printed and bound in silk, a commemorative poem commissioned as a special birthday gift by King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia for his military adviser Friedrich Moritz Helmbrecht (1744-97).
£400
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BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich.
Kratkii kurs nauki o stikhe ... Chast’ pervaia. Chastnaia metrika i ritmika russkago iazyka [A...
Moscow, “Al’tsiona”, 1919.
Very rare first edition, the only chapter to be published of Briusov’s ‘short course in the study of poetry’.
£120
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BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich.
Mig. Stikhi 1920–1921 g. [The Instant. Verses of 1920–1921].
Berlin and St Petersburg, Z.I. Grzhebin, 1922.
First edition. The post-Revolutionary period, spanning the years shortly before his death in 1924, was one of intense poetic activity for Bryusov. Of the work from this period, ‘several poems are devoted to recent history and current events – to the Revolution, the famine years, the death...
£200
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BRODSKII, Iosif Aleksandrovich.
Novye stansy k Avguste. Stikhi k M.B., 1962-1982 [New stanzas to Augusta. Poems to M.B., 1962-1982]....
[Soviet Union, c. 1983].
A rare samizdat of Joseph Brodsky’s poems, prepared in typescript for clandestine circulation in the Soviet Union at a time when his works could not be published or circulated there.
£3500
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BRULL, Mariano.
Canto Redondo.
Paris, Ediciones GLM, 1934.
First edition of Brull’s third book of poems, no. 8 of 12 copies on Normandy Vellum, from an edition of 212, inscribed one the front endpaper to the French poet and translator Mathilde Pomès, ‘amiga cordialisima, con el afecto y la admiración sincera de Mariano Brull / Paris, 1934’.
£500
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BRULL, Mariano, and Mathilde POMÈS, translator.
Solo de Rosa. Poemas.
Con dos rosas de Mariano y Portocarrero. [Havana,] ‘La Veronica’, 1941.
First edition, no. 186 of 300 copies, printed in Cuba and inscribed by the author to his French translator, Mathilde Pomès, with Pomès’s manuscript translation of one of Brull’s poems from Solo de Rosa loosely inserted.
£650
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BULGAKOV, Mikhail Afanas’evich.
Dni Turbinykh. Posledenie dni (A.S. Pushkin) [The Days of the Turbins. The Last Days (A.S....
Moscow, “Iskusstvo”, 1955.
First complete edition. The Days of the Turbins was Bulgakov’s most important play, and the one on which his lasting reputation as a dramatist depends.
£1500
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BULGAKOV, Mikhail Afanasievich.
Sbornik rasskazov [Collection of Stories.]
New York, Chekhov Publishing House, 1952.
First edition in book form of a collection of four short stories: Rokovye iaitsa (‘The fatal eggs’), D’iavoliada (‘Diaboliad’), Dom no. 13 (‘House No. 13’), and Pokhozhdeniia Chichikova (‘The Adventures of Chichikov’).
£200
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BULYGIN, Pavel Petrovich.
Iantari. Stikhotvoreniia [Ambers. Poems.]
Riga, M. Didkovska, [1937].
First and only edition of a posthumous collection by the émigré poet Pavel Petrovich Bulygin (1896-1936).
£300
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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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BUTURLIN, Petr Dmitrievich, Count.
Sonety. Posmertnoe izdanie [Sonnets. Posthumous edition].
[Kiev, Frontskevich,] 1895.
First edition: fifty-seven sonnets by the diplomat and poet Count Pyotr Buturlin (1859-1895).
£1200
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CABRERA INFANTE, Guillermo.
Tres tristes tigres.
Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1967.
First edition of Cabrera Infante’s first major novel: a key work in the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s and a landmark in Cuban literature.
£750
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[CARDUCCI, Giosuè, Olindo GUERRINI, et al., editors.]
...
Bologna, 19 April [– 29 June] 1874.
Very rare complete run of this short-lived satirical magazine against the pro-government newspaper Il Monitore, produced by a group of young liberals from Bologna including the poets Giosuè Carducci and Olindo Guerrini.
£1000
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CARLI, Paolo Francesco da Montecarlo.
La Svinatura di Barbigi Mezzabarba (Paol Francesco Carli da Montecarlo) resa a miglior lezione...
Campobasso, Stab. Tip. Del Progresso, 1878.
Rare edition of a satire by poet and abbot Paolo Francesco Carli (1652–1725) ridiculing the work of his nemesis, the Tuscan priest and schoolmaster Giovan Paolo Lucardesi, who made a tremendous theological blunder in a sonnet in which he describes Christ as ‘crucified and triune’, thus undermining...
£150
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CARO, Annibale.
Rime del commendatore Annibal Caro. Col privilegio di N.S. PP. Pio V. et dell’illustrissima signoria di...
Venice, Aldus Manutius the Younger, 1569.
First edition of the poetry of Annibale Caro, offering a scathing yet humorous critique of his greatest poetic rival, Ludovico Castelvetro.
£650
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CARPENTIER, Alejo.
El Reino de este mundo (relato).
Lima, Talleres Gráficos Torres Aguirres, [1959].
Carpentier’s second novel, re-published on the occasion of the ‘1er Festival del Libro Cubano’ in 1959. First published in Mexico in 1949, the novel treats slave uprisings in eighteenth-century Haiti. The original introduction (reprinted here) contains the first mention of the concept of ‘magic...
£100
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CELAN, Paul.
Von Schwelle zu Schwelle. Gedichte.
Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, [1955].
First edition of Celan’s second collection of poems. Dedicated to his wife Gisèle, it is Celan’s first book to arise wholly from Paris.
£400
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CERNUDA, Luis.
Las Nubes (1937–1938).
Buenos Aires, Colección Rama de Oro, 1943.
First edition: a collection of poems written during Cernuda's stay in England, focusing on the tragic destiny of the Spaniard.
£1000
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CHACHIKOV, Aleksandr Mikhailovich.
Chai-Khane.
Moscow, Moscow Guild of Poets, 1927.
First edition of a collection which highlights the poet’s interest in the Caucasus and other (non-Russian) parts of the Soviet Union, often employing foreign words in the poems.
£100
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CHTETS-DEKLAMATOR.
Chtets-deklamator. Khudozhestvennyi sbornik stikhotvorenii razskazov i monologov dlia chteniia v divertismentakh,...
[Kiev, I.I. Samonenko, 1906.]
Ivan and Fyodor Samonenko’s hugely popular series . There were at least 12 editions before the Revolution, highlighting Russia’s passion for performance at the time. The first volume, containing lyric poetry and humorous verse, had appeared in 1902. A second volume, in 1905, of which this...
£450