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. GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich.

    Shater. Stikhi [The tent. Verses].

    Revel [i.e. Tallinn], “Bibliofil”, [1921].

    First illustrated edition. ‘The publishing house claims that this edition was made from the manuscript handed over by Gumilev in June 1921, the year he was arrested and executed. It contains more material than the [first edition published the same year]’ (Kilgour 427, note).

    £250

  2. GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich, translator. GAUTIER, Théophile.

    Emali i kamei [Émaux et camées].

    [St Petersburg, M. V. Popov, 1914.]

    First edition, very rare: Gumilev’s first published volume of translation, and Gautier’s first appearance in Russian. This is the only contemporary edition; it first received a reprint (in a bilingual edition) some 75 years later.

    £850

  3. HAMSUN, Knut.

    Ny Jord. Roman.

    Copenhagen, P. G. Philipsens Forlag, 1893.

    First edition of Shallow Soil, an early novel by the Norwegian nobel prize-winning author. Hamsun himself described the novel as being ‘about Norwegian youth’, ‘full of symbolism, but so little Ibsenish, I hope, that it can be understood.’

    £200

  4. HAMSUN, Knut.

    Munken Vendt.

    Copenhagen, Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, 1902.

    First edition of the verse drama Friar Vendt.

    £300

  5. HARINGER, Jakob.

    Die Einsiedelei. Ein Stundenblatt. Nr. VIII-XV [Poems].

    Amsterdam, Christof Brundel Verlag, [1930].

    First edition, rare, of a collection of several short pieces by the Expressionist poet Jakob Haringer. It includes: ‘Chinesische Strofen’, ‘Unbekannter Dichter/ Werke für einen Freund’, ‘Werke aus dem ägyptischen’, ‘Lieder von den Salomo-Inseln’, ‘Werke nach Ronsard’ and ‘Werke...

    £250

  6. HEINE, Heinrich.

    Zur Geschichte der neueren schönen Literatur in Deutschland.

    Paris & Leipzig, Heideloff und Campe, 1833.

    First edition of a work on contemporary German literature, intended as a sort of continuation of Madame de Staël’s De L’Allemagne. It first appeared as a series of articles in the Paris journal L’Europe littéraire. This first edition was banned on publication, and is very rare. A second, expanded...

    £1250

  7. HEINE, Heinrich.

    Französische Zustände.

    Hamburg, Hoffmann und Campe, 1833.

    First edition in book form of a series of newspaper articles, first published in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, discussing cultural and political developments in France. It was Heine’s first work of political journalism.

    £550

  8. HEMINGWAY, Ernest.

    Imet’ i ne imet’ [To have and have not].

    Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1938.

    First edition in Russian of To have and have not (1937), with an introduction by the Soviet critic Ivan Anisimov. Hemingway’s first appearance in Russian was Death in the Afternoon in 1934, when he was praised in the Soviet Union as an active anti-Fascist, and he soon became a favourite foreign author...

    £1250

  9. HERBERT, Zbigniew.

    Struna Światła.

    [Warsaw], Czytelnik, [1956].

    Rare first edition of the influential Polish poet, playwright and essayist’s first book, a collection of 40 poems under the title String of light. It was printed in an edition of 1205 copies. Herbert had published a few poems in reviews from the late 1940s, but because of the political situation in...

    £450

  10. [HERISSANT, Louis Théodore].

    Le fablier françois, ou élite des meilleurs fables depuis La Fontaine.

    Paris, Lottin le jeune, 1771.

    First edition, rare, of what has a claim to be the first comprehensive collection of French fables from the period after La Fontaine, assembled by the diplomat, lawyer, and historian Louis-Théodore Herissant (1743–1811). Collecting together fables from writers both famous (Voltaire, J.B. Rousseau,...

    £650

  11. HESSE, Hermann.

    Das Glasperlenspiel.

    Zurich, Fretz und Wasmuth Verlag, 1943.

    First edition of Hesse's last, quintessential work. It occupied him for eleven years, and was published in 1943, the year in which Hesse's name was placed on the black-list of authors in Germany.

    £750

  12. HESSE, Hermann.

    Frühe Prosa.

    Zurich, Fretz & Wasmuth, [1948].

    First edition of this collection, with new prefatory material by Hesse himself. It brings together three prose works from before the publication of Peter Camenzind (1904): Eine Stude hinter Mitternacht (1899), Der Novalis (written 1899–1902, published 1907), and Hermann...

    £100

  13. HOFFMANN VON FALLERSLEBEN, August Heinrich.

    Unpolitische Lieder.

    Hamburg, Hoffmann and Campe, 1840–1. [bound with:]

    First edition of each work. Hoffmann (1784–1874), self-ennobled ‘von Fallersleben’, was first librarian (1823) and then professor of German language and literature (1830) at the University of Breslau, before his dismissal in 1842 due to the politically sensitive content of the supposedly Unpolitischen...

    £100

  14. HOFMANNSTHAL, Hugo von.

    Die Aegyptische Helena. Oper in zwei Aufzügen.

    [Leipzig, Mainzer Presse for Insel-Verlag, 1928.]

    First edition of Hofmannsthal’s text for Richard Strauss’s opera – Hofmannsthal himself considered it to be his finest libretto. The opera was first performed on 6 June 1928 in Dresden, five weeks before Hofmannsthal’s death. The plot is a free adaptation of Euripides’ Helena, which introduces...

    £750

  15. HUGO, Victor.

    Notre-Dame de Paris. Par Victor Hugo. Troisième edition … Tome premier [– deuxième].

    Paris, Charles Gosselin, 1831.

    First edition, third issue, of Victor Hugo’s great historical novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of 275 copies printed.

    £7500

  16. IVANOV, Georgii Vladimirovich.

    ...

    Petrograd, [“Mysl’”], 1922.

    First edition: Ivanov’s last collection of poems before his emigration. ‘Never regularly employed and having made many illwishers through his penchant pour épatage, Ivanov led the last years of his life in semi-starvation, … and died in misery and desperation. Only recently has he begun to be...

    £300

  17. IVANOV, Viacheslav Ivanovich.

    Mladenchestvo [Infancy].

    St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1918.

    First edition. The poet, translator, critic and scholar Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949) was one of the leaders of the Symbolist movement and its principal theorist. This, his contribution to the new Symbolist genre of autobiographical ‘long poem’ (poema in Russian, a form made popular by Pushkin...

    £600

  18. IVANOV, Viacheslav Ivanovich.

    Prometei. Tragediia [Prometheus. A tragedy].

    St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1919.

    First edition of Ivanov’s dramatic poem Prometheus, which follows the form of Greek tragedy. The plot is a restatement of classical myth in terms of Ivanov’s Neoplatonic philosophy.

    £250

  19. IVANOV, Vsevolod Viacheslavovich, and Viktor Borisovich SHKLOVSKII.

    Iprit. Roman. Vypusk I [– IX] [Mustard Gas. A novel. Parts...

    Moscow, Gosizdat, [1925].

    First edition, a complete set of a rare satirical science fiction novel, issued serially. Ivanov (1895–1963) and Shklovsky (1893–1984) both had connections to the literary group the Serapion Brothers, who upheld the creed that art must be independent of political ideology. Iprit is a parody of Soviet...

    £2500

  20. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Trois filles de mon quartier. [Paris], G. L.

    M., [1948].

    First edition: one of 340 numbered copies, of which this is one of 300 on Alfama.

    £350