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.
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CASTRO, Manuel de.
Lámpara (Vigilias de la cruz y la flauta) Poemas.
[Montevideo], Fernandez y Gonzales, 1938.
First edition, a presentation copy with an inscription and sketches by the Uruguayan journalist, novelist and poet Manuel de Castro (1896–1970).
£850
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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
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CIRIA Y ESCALANTE, José de.
[Poemas.]
Madrid, Artes de la illustración, 1924.
Scarce first edition, no. 172 of 200 copies, a collection of thirteen poems by Ciria y Escalante, who died from typhus at the age of twenty-one, brought posthumously to press by the author’s friends, among them Lorca and Buñuel.
£1500
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[COLETTE.] ‘WILLY’, pseud. [Henri GAUTHIER-VILLARS].
En Bombe. Roman modern. Illustrations photographiques.
Paris, Nilsson, Per Lamm, [1904].
First edition of these vignettes of bohemian life in fin-de-siècle Paris by author and critic Willy, illustrated by nearly one hundred photographs of the author himself, as well as Marcel Boulestin, Marcelle Rossat, and Colette’s famous French bulldog, Toby-Chien.
£600
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CORNEILLE, Pierre.
Nicomède tragedie.
Rouen, Laurens Maurry (and Paris, Guillaume de Luyne), 1653.
Second edition (first 1651) of Corneille’s tragedy of sibling rivalry and the conflict of political and aristocratic ideals, set in Rome in the second century BC. It was written after Corneille moved to Paris in 1647 and was first staged at the height of the Fronde rebellion, after which he wrote nothing...
£750
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CORNEILLE, Thomas.
Il Pirro, tragedia … tradotta dal francese e recitata da’ signori cavalieri del Collegio Clementino nelle...
Bologna, Longhi, [1700?].
A very uncommon set of eight early translations by Thomas Corneille (1625–1709), the younger brother of Pierre, 'le Grand Corneille', published in the context of the Italian Accademie.
£750
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[COURTILZ DE SANDRAS, Gatien de.]
Les dames dans leur naturel, ou la galanterie sans façon. Sous le regne du Grand Alcandre.
‘A Cologne’ [but The Netherlands], ‘chez Pierre Marteau’, 1686.
First edition, uncommon, of this tale of the debauchery of the ladies at Louis XIV’s court, purportedly ‘found in a cabinet, long after it had been written’ by the author.
£685
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[DANIEL, Yuli Markovich,]
pseud. ‘Nikolai ARZHAK’. Говорит Москва. Повесть [Govorit Moskva. Povest’....
Munich, I. Baschkirzew for Washington, D.C., B[oris] Filippoff, 1962.
First edition, smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published pseudonymously, of this dystopian work in which the government ‘declares a “Day of Public Murders” and permits random murder’ (Terras), one of the books which led directly to Daniel’s arrest and show trial in 1966 for ‘anti-Soviet...
£150
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DAUDET, Alphonse.
Lettres de mon moulin. Impressions et souvenirs.
Paris, J. Hetzel et Cie, [1869].
First edition, rare, the issue arbitrarily designated ‘deuxième édition’ but published alongside the first, of Letters from my Windmill, Daudet’s celebrated sketches of Provençal life.
£2500
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DE BEAUVOIR, Simone.
The Mandarins. A Novel …
Cleveland and New York, The World Publishing Company, [1956].
First edition in English, signed by De Beauvoir on the limitation leaf, one of 500 unnumbered copies, of which only 275 were for sale.
£750
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DELL’UVA, Benedetto.
Le vergini prudenti.
Florence, Bartolomeo Sermartelli, 1582.
First editions of three religious poems in ottava rima by the Capuan monk Benedetto dell’Uva, representative of Counter-Reformation poetry in southern Italy.
£650
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DESENFANS, Noel Joseph.
Les deux Hermites, dédié a mylord Lyttelton …
A Londres; chez R. Davis … J Ridley … W Owen … 1773.
First and only edition, uncommon, of an epistolary novel by the future art dealer Noel Joseph Desenfans. The scene is Paris in the 1680s, the theme is Enlightenment, and the author’s aim was to inspire ‘l’horreur de l’oppression, sentiment nécessaire à l’harmonie de la Société, & vertu...
£650
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DEVOTO, Daniel.
Libro de las fabulas. Ilustraciones de Atilio del Soldato.
[Buenos Aires], Gulab y Aldabahor, 1943.
First edition of this collection of Devoto’s poems, in the copy printed especially for him. This is one of five copies printed on Whatman paper, of a total edition of 555: ‘Ejemplar II, Especialmente impreso para Daniel Devoto’.
£400
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DEVOTO, Daniel J.
Las Elegias de Empalme.
[Buenos Aires], 1940.
First edition, limited to 170 copies, of this small group of poems from early in the career of the Argentinian poet and music historian Daniel J. Devoto (1916–2001).
£300
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'DON-AMINADO', pseud. [Aminad Petrovich SHPOLIANSKII].
Neskuchnyi sad [Bare garden].
Paris, [Imprimerie E.I.R.P.,] 1935.
First edition, no. 38 of 150 copies, a poetical collection by the émigré poet, satirist and feuilletonist Aminad Shpolyansky.
£150
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‘DORNIS, Jean’ [pseud. Élena BEER].
La voie douloureuse.
[Évreux, Charles Hérissey for] Paris, Calmann Levy, 1894.
First edition of Jean Dornis’ first novel, presented by the author to her brother-in-law, Edmond Raphael Beer, one of twenty-four copies on papier de Hollande.
£275
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DU BOS, Jean-Baptiste, Abbé.
Reflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture. … Quatriéme [sic] édition revûë,...
Paris, Pierre-Jean Mariette, 1740.
Fourth edition, expanded and corrected, of this key work in aesthetic and sentimental theory, with Coleridge family provenance.
£250
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DUMAS, Alexandre.
Autograph letter, signed.
[Paris, not before 1859.]
A short note by the novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) sending a theatre ticket and arranging to meet the unknown recipient at the Comédie-française (‘theatre francais’) at midday the following day. He says that he will do whatever he can to obtain a small box at the Théâtre...
£750