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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. BLOK, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich.

    Stikhi o Rossii [Poems about Russia].

    [St Petersburg], “Otechestvo”, 1915.

    First edition of a rare volume of poems, collected and published as a separate book by the patriotic journal Otechestvo.

    £400

  2. BLOK, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich.

    ...

    Berlin, “Skify”, [1920].

    First edition: a comic one-act dialogue variously between a Poet in love, a Fool, and a Courtier, written towards the end of Blok’s life.

    £250

  3. BLOK, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich.

    O sovremennom sostoianii russkogo simvolizma [On the current state of Russian symbolism].

    St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1921.

    First edition, a lecture read by Blok in April 1910 before the Society of Zealots of the Artistic Word, a discussion group formed by Gumilev, Blok and others in 1909.

    £150

  4. BLOK, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich.

    Vozmezdie [Retribution].

    St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1922.

    First edition of Blok’s verse epic, on which he worked from 1910 until his death in 1921. Fragments were published during his lifetime, but the poem did not appear in its entirety until this posthumous edition.

    £350

  5. [BLOK, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich.] ASHUKIN, Nikolai Sergeevich.

    Aleksandr Blok. Sinkhronisticheskie tablitsy zhizni i tvorchestva...

    Moscow, “Novaia Moskva”, 1923.

    First edition: a chronology of Blok’s life and a bibliography of his works, together with a list of secondary literature.

    £300

  6. BOCCACCIO, Giovanni.

    Philocholo opera elegantissima de lo excellente Poeta & Oratore Joanne boccacio.

    [(Colophon:) Milan, [Alessandro Minuziano], 25 March 1520.]

    An uncommon edition of Boccaccio’s first prose narrative, a fantastical tale of love overcoming all obstacles.

    £950

  7. BOLAÑO, Roberto.

    2666.

    Barcelona, Editorial Anagrama, [2004].

    First edition of the Chilean writer’s last novel, the major preoccupation of the last five years of his life.

    £500

  8. BRACCIOLINI, Francesco.

    Della croce racquistata, poema heroico libri XV.

    Paris, René Ruelle, 1605.

    First edition of Francesco Bracciolini’s epic poem modelled on Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1591), narrating the recovery of the True Cross by the seventh-century Byzantine Emperor Heraclius from the Persian Emperor Khosrow II, and its return to Jerusalem in 629–630 AD. It is possible...

    £1500

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. 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

  13. 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

  14. 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

  15. 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

  16. 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.

    £950

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. [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

  20. 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