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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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  1. FEDIN, Konstantin Aleksandrovich.

    Goroda i gody. Roman [Cities and years. A novel].

    Leningrad, Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1924.

    First edition of Fedin’s autobiographical first novel, Cities and Years, an intense exploration of war and its aftermath, and the role of the intelligentsia in the inevitable revolution looming over society. The cities of the title are Berlin and Moscow, and the years those of the First World War and...

    £1200

  2. FERDOWSĪ.

    Shāhnāmah.

    Tehran, Amir Kabir, AH 1350 [AD 1971].

    A lavishly-produced edition of the Shāhnāmah (or Shahnameh), rare in the dustjacket, one of a thousand copies printed to mark the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire.

    £4750

  3. FOIX, Josep Vicenç.

    Obres poètiques, amb un pròleg de l’autor.

    Barcelona, Edicions Nauta, 1964.

    First edition of this collected anthology of Foix’s poems and prose pieces, no. 833 of 1100 numbered copies signed by the author, together with the first printing of Desa acquests llibres al calaix de baix.

    £200

  4. [GARCÍA LORCA, Federico, et al.]

    Los Cuatro Vientos.

    Madrid, Febrero [–Junio], 1933.

    The complete run of this short-lived Madrid literary review, from February to June of 1933.

    £950

  5. GARCÍA LORCA, Federico.

    Bodas de sangre. Tragedia en 3 actos y 7 cuadros… Estrenada en Buenos Aires por la eminente actriz Lola...

    Buenos Aires, Teatro del Pueblo, November 1936.

    An early edition of Lorca’s Blood Wedding, published, shortly after the poet’s death, in Buenos Aires, where the play had enormous success with Lola Membrives playing the role of the mother.

    £300

  6. GARCÍA LORCA, Federico.

    Poema del cante jondo.

    Santiago de Chile, Editorial Veloz, [1937].

    Third edition, published in Santiago de Chile, with an introduction by Pablo Neruda.

    £150

  7. GARCÍA LORCA, Federico.

    Chant funèbre pour Ignacio Sanchez Mejias & Ode à Walt Whitman. Traduits par Rolland-Simon.

    [Paris], GLM, 1938.

    Rare first edition in French of Lorca’s Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías: copy no. 2 of 20 printed on hollande pannekoek (first paper) of a total edition of 470.

    £500

  8. GARCIA LORCA, Federico.

    Cinq romances gitanes, texte espagnol et traduction par Guy Lévis-Mano.

    [Paris], GLM, [1939].

    First edition, one of 475 numbered copies, of translations into French by Guy Lévis-Mano of five poems from the Romancero gitano: ‘Saint Gabriel’, ‘La casada infiel’, ‘Romance sonámbulo’, ‘Romance de la Guardia Civil española’ and ‘Romance de la luna, luna’.

    £100

  9. GARCÍA LORCA, Federico.

    Mariana Pineda. Romance popular en tres estampas.

    Madrid, La Farsa, 1928.

    First edition of Lorca’s first published play, Mariana Pineda, ‘about the Granadine heroine Mariana Pineda, who had been executed in 1831 at the age of twenty-seven by the repressive regime of Ferdinand VII, on the charge of having embroidered a flag for the town's liberal conspirators....

    £450

  10. GARCÍA LORCA, Federico.

    Romancero gitano.

    [Barcelona], Editorial Nuestro Pueblo, 1937.

    Published seven months after Lorca’s death, this ‘Edición de homenaje popular’ has an introduction by Rafael Alberti.

    £200

  11. GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, Gabriel, and Avellí ARTÍS-GENER, translator.

    ...

    Barcelona, Edhasa, 1970.

    First edition of Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude in Catalan, translated by the journalist, translator, and writer Avellí Artís-Gener (1912–2000).

    £150

  12. GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, Gabriel.

    ‘El Olor de la Guayaba.’ Conversaciones con Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza.

    Bogotá, La Oveja Negra, 1982.

    First edition, published simultaneously in Colombia, Spain and Mexico. A series of interviews with García Márquez in which he discusses his family, his friends, his enemies, his work, his views on politics, etc.

    £150

  13. GIONO, Jean.

    Colline.

    Paris, Bernard Grasset, Les Cahiers Verts, 1929.

    First edition of Giono’s first book, one of 170 numbered copies on vélin pur fil; it forms the first part of his successful ‘Pan trilogy’ with Un de Baumugnes (1929) and Regain (1930).

    £450

  14. GLOBA, Andrei Pavlovich.

    Korabli izdaleka [Ships from Afar].

    Moscow & Petrograd, 1922.

    First edition, an early collection by Globa (1888–1964), a popular Soviet writer whose poetry became well known as song lyrics.

    £100

  15. [GOETHE.] 

    REICHARDT, Johann Friedrich.  Goethe’s Lieder, Oden, Balladen und Romanzen mit Musik von J.F. Reichardt.  Erste...

    Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, [1809–11]. 

    Very rare first complete edition of Reichardt’s musical settings of Goethe’s poetry, comprising 128 settings of which thirty-nine appear here for the first time. 

    £6500

  16. [GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von.] ECKERMANN, Johann Peter; Dmitry Vasilievich AVERKIEV, translator.

    Разговоры Гете,...

    St Petersburg, A. S. Suvorin, 1891.

    First edition in Russian, very rare, of Eckermann’s famous Gespräche mit Goethe (1836-48). A professor of English and German at the University of Jena and later librarian at Weimar, Eckermann was Goethe’s companion and unpaid secretary from 1823 until Goethe’s death in 1832, and...

    £1500

  17. GOETHE, Johan Wolfgang von; Boris Leonidovich PASTERNAK, translator. 

    Тайны [Tainy; ‘Die Geheimnisse’ or ‘The...

    Moscow, Izdatel’stvo Sovremennik, 1922. 

    First and only edition, very rare, of Pasternak’s early translation of Goethe’s epic fragment Die Geheimnisse (The Mysteries); with a long introductory note by Professor Grigorii Rachinskii.

    £1200

  18. GOGOL’, Nikolai Vasil’evich, and Louis VIARDOT (translator).

    Tarass Boulba… traduit du russe par Louis Viardot.

    Paris, Librairie de L. Hachette et Cie, 1853.

    First separate appearance of Gogol’s story in the French translation by Louis Viardot, with an introduction by Turgenev, published in the series ‘Bibliothèque des chemins de fer’.

    £250

  19. GOLDONI, Carlo.

    Scelta di alcune commedie. Per uso de’ dilettanti della lingua italiana. Prima edizione italiana.

    Livorno, Assunto Barbani, 1816.

    First edition printed in Italy of a collection of ten comedies by Goldoni, selected for their lack of complicated syntax and lack of Venetian dialect and idioms, published in Livorno for the benefit of the English community.

    £175

  20. GONZAGA, Curzio.

    Il Fido amante, poema eroico.

    Mantua, [(colophon:) Giacomo Ruffinello, 1582].

    First edition of an Italian Renaissance heroic poem in thirty-six cantos, much appreciated by Tasso and published the year after the first authorized edition of the Gerusalemme liberata.

    £600