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. [HERISSANT, Louis Théodore].

    Le fablier françois, ou élite des meilleurs...

    Paris, Lottin le jeune, 1771.

    First edition, rare, of what has a claim...

    £650

  2. [HERZEN, Aleksandr Ivanovich]. ISKANDER (pseud.).

    Prervannye razskazy… Izdanie vtoroe -...

    London, Trübner & Co., 1857.

    Second, corrected edition of this collection...

    £1250

  3. HESSE, Hermann.

    Frühe Prosa.

    Zurich, Fretz & Wasmuth, [1948].

    First edition of this collection, with...

    £100

  4. HESSE, Hermann.

    Siddhartha. Eine indische Dichtung.

    Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag, 1922.

    First edition of Hesse’s most celebrated...

    £1200

  5. [HIGHWAYMEN.]

    Processo formato contro due famosissimi...

    Milan, Pietro Francesco Malatesta, [1744].

    Seemingly unrecorded printing of the trials...

    £500

  6. HOFMANNSTHAL, Hugo von.

    Die Aegyptische Helena. Oper in zwei Aufzügen.

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

    First edition of Hofmannsthal’s text...

    £750

  7. HUGO, Victor.

    Notre-Dame de Paris. Par Victor Hugo. Troisième...

    Paris, Charles Gosselin, 1831.

    First edition, third issue, of Victor Hugo’s...

    £7500

  8. IVANOV, Georgii Vladimirovich.

    Lampada. Sobranie stikhotvorenii, Kniga...

    Petrograd, [“Mysl’”], 1922.

    First edition of Ivanov’s last collection...

    £300

  9. IVANOV, Viacheslav Ivanovich.

    Mladenchestvo [Infancy].

    St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1918.

    First edition. The poet, translator, critic...

    £600

  10. IVANOV, Vyacheslav Ivanovich.

    Прометей трагедия [Prometei...

    St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1919.

    First edition of Ivanov’s dramatic poem...

    £250

  11. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Le Livre des Questions.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1963].

    First edition. This is the first of what...

    £300

  12. JABÈS, Edmond.

    El, Ou le dernier livre.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1973].

    First edition, one of 40 numbered copies...

    £300

  13. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Le Livre des ressemblances.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1976].

    First edition, one of 20 numbered copies...

    £300

  14. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Trois filles de mon quartier.

    [Paris], G. L. M., [1948].

    First edition: one of 340 numbered copies,...

    £550

  15. JABÈS, Edmond.

    La clef de voûte.

    [Paris], G.L.M., [1950].

    First edition: one of 400 numbered copies,...

    £550

  16. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Yaël.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1967].

    First edition, one of 30 numbered copies...

    £500

  17. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Aely.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1972].

    First edition, one of the issue of ordinary...

    £100

  18. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Trois filles de mon quartier.

    [Paris], G.L.M., [1948].

    First edition of thse poems by the Egyptian–Jewish...

    £350

  19. JAYADEVA; Friedrich MAJER, translator.

    Gita-Govinda, ein Indisches Singspiel …...

    Weimar, im Verlage des Landes-Industrie-Comptoirs,...

    First and only separate edition of this...

    £475

  20. JIMÉNEZ, Juan Ramón.

    Pastorales. La tristeza del campo – El...

    Madrid, Biblioteca Renacimiento, 1911.

    First edition: a collection of poems from...

    £650