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  1. KAMENSKII, Vasilii Vasilievich, and Nikolai Pavlovich DMITREVSKY (illustrator).

    Emel’ian Pugachev, poema. Graviury...

    [Leningrad], ‘Molodaia Gvardiia’, 1931.

    First edition of Kamensky’s long narrative poem, preceded by a play on the same subject in 1925.

    £1200

  2. ‘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

  3. ‘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...

    £350

  4. SHAGINYAN, Marietta Sergeevna.

    Gëte [Goethe].

    Moscow and Leningrad, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1950.

    First edition of Marietta Sergeevna Shaginyan’s (1888–1982) scholarly work on Goethe, which particularly examines Russian (and Soviet) appreciations. The great German writer was Shaginyan’s (or Shaginian’s) idol, as attested by Puteshestvie v Veimar (Journey to Weimar).

    £350

  5. PIUS II (Nicolaus von WYLE, editor). 

    Epistolae familiares. 

    Nuremberg, Anton Koberger, 17 July 1486. 

    Second Koberger edition of the Epistolae familiares of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405–1464), the great Renaissance humanist who became Pope Pius II in 1458, a handsome copy enhanced with manuscript additions comprising epistolary models, a German-Latin wordlist, and medical recipes. 

    £7500

  6. TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.

    Posmertnyia khudozhestvennyia proizvedeniia… pod redaktsii V Chertkova. Tom I [-III] [Posthumous...

    [Moscow], A.L. Tolstoy, [1912].

    A reprint, in slightly smaller format than the first edition of 1911, of Tolstoy’s posthumous works, which included the first appearance of many important pieces:Hadji Murad, as well as The Memoirs of a Madman and The Devil, was published only in 1911, in the collected edition...

    £800

  7. GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich (translator). GAUTIER, Théophile.

    Emali i kamei [Émaux et camées].

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

    First edition, very rare, of 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 seventy-five years later.

    £850

  8. 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

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

    Prervannye razskazy… Izdanie vtoroe - ispravlennoe avtorom [Interrupted...

    London, Trübner & Co., 1857.

    Second, corrected edition of this collection of four short stories, which had initially been published in Russian periodicals, and were first collected and published as one volume in London in 1854.

    £1250

  10. [BELYI, Andrei, pseud. [Boris Nikolaevich BUGAEV], et al.]

    Kak my pishem [How we write].

    Leningrad, Izdatel’stvo pisatelei, [1930].

    First edition of these sketches on the art of writing, published as an aid to young writers, with contributions from Bely, Gorky, Zamyatin, Zoshchenko, Kaverin, Lavrenev, Libedinsky, Nikitin, Pilnyak, Slonimsky, Tikhonov, Aleksei Tolstoy, Tynyanov, Fedin, Olga Forsh, Chapygin, Shishkov, and Shklovsky.

    £450

  11. 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

  12. [COLONNA, Francesco.] 

    Poliphili hypnerotomachia, ubi humana omnia non nisi somnium esse ostendit, atque obiter plurima scitu...

    Venice, [heirs of Aldus], 1545. 

    Second edition, scarcer than the first (also an Aldine, published in 1499), of the most beautiful illustrated books printed in Italy in the fifteenth century.  Known for its fine woodcut illustrations, mysterious meanings, and the cryptic inclusion of Colonna’s name, the Hypnerotomachia...

    £24000

  13. ALBERTI, Leon Battista.

    El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia del Momo; compuesta en Latin por el docto varon Leon Bapista...

    Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.

    First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s Momus [or De principe], translated by Augustín de Almaçan and with an introductory 8-page Exposición by the Toledo ascetic writer and scholar Alejo Venegas (1495?–1554?).

    £3800

  14. ANSELMI, Giorgio, the younger

    Georgii Anselmi nepotis Epigrammaton libri septem. Sosthyrides. Peplum Palladis. Aeglogae...

    Venice, Maffeo Pasini, September 1528. 

    The definitive edition of the epigrams of Giorgio Anselmi, grandson of the astrologer and music theorist of the same name, with several epigrams on his grandfather’s lost works on magic and the occult. 

    £875

  15. URCEO, Antonio [or Codro]. 

    Hoc Codri volumine haec continentur.  Orationes, seu sermones ut ipse appellabat.  Epistolae. ...

    Bologna, Giovanni Antonio Benedetti, 7 March 1502. 

    First edition of a quintessential piece of Italian humanism, annotated by a sixteenth-century reader particularly interested in the philology of the texts. 

    £3000

  16. [GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von.] ECKERMANN, Johann Peter, and Dmitry Vasilievich AVERKIEV (translator).

    Razgovory Gete...

    St Petersburg, A.S. Suvorin, 1891.

    Rare first edition in Russian of Eckermann’s famous Gespräche mit Goethe (1836/48); a second edition followed in 1905.

    £1500

  17. 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

  18. GOR’KII, Maksim, pseud. [Aleksei Maksimovich PESHKOV].

    Delo Artamonovykh [The Artamonov business].

    Berlin, “Kniga”, 1925.

    First edition. ‘[Gorky’s] best novel, The Artamonov Business (1925), follows the Artamonovs through three generations, from the uneducated grandfather, a strong and enterprising, lusty patriarch who starts a small factory and builds it into a major industrial plant, to a grandson, an intellectual...

    £450

  19. BOCCACCIO, Giovanni, and Mikhail Alekseevich KUZMIN (translator).

    Bokkachch’o. Fiametta. Per. M. Kuzmina [Boccaccio....

    St Petersburg, M.G. Kornfel’d, 1913.

    Extremely rare first edition of Kuzmin’s translation of Boccaccio’s Fiammetta.

    £1200

  20. TURGENEV, Ivan Sergeevich.

    Nov’. Roman [Virgin Soil. A Novel].

    Moscow, 1878.

    First edition printed in Russia of Turgenev’s novel about the Populists of the 1870s. It was first published in the journal Vestnik Evropy in 1877, followed shortly afterwards by an edition published in Leipzig.

    £1500