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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. OZEROV, Vladislav Aleksandrovich.

    Sochineniia … Chast’ pervaia [–vtoraia] [Works … Part one [–two]].

    St Petersburg, Imperial Theatre, 1817 [-1816].

    One of two rival collected editions published after Ozerov’s death in 1816, rare, including the first appearance of the author’s poetry and his last tragedy Poliksena.

    £1800

  2. PASTERNAK, Boris Leonidovich (translator). BARATASHVILI, Nikoloz.

    Stikhotvoreniia v perevode Borisa Pasternaka [Poems in...

    Moscow, “Pravda”, 1946.

    First edition, very rare. Nikoloz Baratashvili (1817–1845) is ‘the greatest of the Georgian Romantic poets … [and] one of the first Georgians to fire a modern nationalism with European Romanticism … He died of malaria, unmourned and unpublished. His influence was long delayed, until the Georgian...

    £1100

  3. PASTERNAK, Boris Leonidovich.

    Dve knigi. Stikhi [Two Books. Poems].

    Moscow-Leningrad, Gosizdat, 1927.

    First collected edition of Pasternak’s two major early collections of verse, My Sister Life (1922) and Themes and Variations (1923).

    £900

  4. PASTERNAK, Boris Leonidovich.

    Na rannikh poezdakh [On early trains].

    Moscow, “Sovetskii pisatel’”, 1943.

    First edition of this collection of poems from the years 1936 to 1941.

    £750

  5. PASTERNAK, Boris Leonidovich.

    Zemnoi prostor [Expanses of Land].

    Moscow, “Sovetskii pisatel’”, 1945.

    First edition of Pasternak’s war poems.

    £400

  6. PASTERNAK, Boris Leonidovich, translator.

    Gruzinskie Poety [Georgian Poets].

    Moscow, Sovestskii pisatel’, 1946.

    First edition, comprising Pasternak’s translations of most of the surviving œuvre of Nik’oloz Baratashvili, first published in a very rare volume earlier in the year, and here supplemented by new translations of works by Ak’ak’i Tseretili, Vazha Pshavela (pseud. of Luka Razikashvili),...

    £750

  7. PETNIKOV, Grigorii Nikolaevich.

    Kniga Marii zazhgi snega [The Book of ‘Mary Light the Snows’].

    St Petersburg, “Liren’”, 1920.

    First edition of the last of the poet-translator’s books to be published by Liren’, the publishing house he founded together with Aseev in 1914.

    £100

  8. PILNIAK, Boris, pseud. [Boris Andreevich VOGAU].

    Povesti o chernom khlebe [Stories about black bread].

    Moscow & St. Petersburg, “Krug”, 1923.

    First edition, comprising two short stories, ‘Volki’ (Wolves) and ‘Chernyi Khleb’ (Black bread), written in Kolomna in 1922-3.

    £300

  9. PILNIAK, Boris, pseud. [Boris Andreevich VOGAU].

    Rasplesnutoe vremia. Rasskazy [Spilled time. Stories].

    Moscow and Leningrad, Gosizdat, 1927.

    First edition of a collection of short stories previously published only in periodicals (in 1925-7); this collection represents a shift in Pilniak’s style towards social realism – most of the stories are grouped under the general heading ‘Recurring tales’.

    £350

  10. ‘PILNIAK, Boris’, [pseud. Boris Andreevich VOGAU].

    Kamni i Korni [Rocks and roots].

    Moscow, SovLit, 1934.

    First edition in book form, a strange modernist travelogue in which Pilniak critically reworks his earlier Korni iaponskago solntsa (Roots of the Japanese Sun, 1927).

    £300

  11. PILNIAK, Boris, pseud. [Boris Andreevich VOGAU].

    Shtoss v zhizn’ [Shtoss in life].

    Berlin, Petropolis, [1929].

    First edition, a collection of three stories.

    £250

  12. ‘PILNIAK, Boris’ [pseud. Boris Andreevich VOGAU].

    Kitaiskaia povest’ [A Chinese tale].

    Moscow and Leningrad, Gosizdat, 1928.

    First edition. A visit to the Far East in 1927 gave Pilniak material for a number of works, such as the present one, but controversy back in Russia grew over an earlier story, Povest’ nepogashennoi luny (The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon, 1926, which had strongly suggested that Stalin...

    £350

  13. PISEMSKII, Aleksei Feofilaktovich.

    Povesti i razskazy … v trekh chastiakh [Stories and tales … in three parts] …

    Moscow, Stepanova, 1853.

    Very rare first collected edition of the works of Pisemsky, including the first appearance in book form of many of his acclaimed early stories (Tiufiak (The Muff, translated into English as The Simpleton), Pitershchik (The Petersburger), Mr Batmanov, Brak po strasti...

    £4800

  14. PISEMSKII, Aleksei Feofilaktovich.

    Ocherki iz krest’ianskago byta [Sketches from Peasant Life].

    St Petersburg, [A. Dmitriev,] 1856.

    First edition: ‘one of Pisemsky’s most universally acclaimed books’ (Moser, p. 54) and the one which cemented his reputation as ‘a chronicler of the life of the common people’ (Terras).

    £3000

  15. [POETS’ GUILD.]

    Tsekh Poetov I [–III].

    Berlin, S. Efron, 1922[–3].

    First edition of this literary almanack from the newly re-established Poets’ Guild, first formed in 1911 and with members including Gumilev, Gorodetsky, and Mandelstam, the core of whom became known as the Acmeists.

    £1250

  16. [PORCELAIN.] KUKHNOV, A.F.

    Recueil de marques de fabriques de porcelaine Russes.

    [Paris, Imprimerie de Vaugirard, 1927.]

    Rare first and only edition of Kukhnov’s descriptive catalogue of eminent Russian porcelain factories, comprising brief histories of the factories accompanied by reproductions of their various factory marks.

    £600

  17. PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich. Manuel ALTOLAGUIRRE and Ovady SAVICH, translators.

    Teatro (El Convidado de piedra....

    Barcelona, Editado por la Asociación de Relaciones con la U.R.S.S. en el primer centenario del poeta, 1938.

    First edition of Altolaguirre’s translation of two of Pushkin’s Little Tragedies, ‘The Stone Guest’ and ‘A Feast During the Plague’ produced for the Russian poet’s centenary; apparently printed on Altolaguirre’s own press.

    £300

  18. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.] BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich (editor).

    Pis’ma Pushkina i k Pushkinu. Novye materialy,...

    Moscow, Press of the Society for the Distribution of Useful Books, 1903.

    First edition of this collection of Pushkin’s correspondence, edited by the Symbolist poet and critic Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873–1924); most of the contents are published from the original manuscripts.

    £900

  19. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.] BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich (editor).

    Litseiskie stikhi Pushkina, po rukopisiam Moskovskago...

    Moscow, “Skorpion”, 1907.

    First edition – the symbolist poet Valery Briusov’s critical notes to volume I of the Academy edition of Pushkin’s Works (1899), which had included his Lycée poems 1812-17.

    £350

  20. PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.

    Sochineniia A. S. Pushkina. Tom pervyi [- shestoi + Prilozheniia]… Izdanie Ia. A. Isakova [The...

    St Petersburg, Eduard Prats, 1859-60.

    Third collected edition of the works of Pushkin, complete with the supplement volume compiled by Grigorii Gennadi; this is the first edition to be edited by Isakov. Very rare.

    £8000