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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. LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim, and Viktor KRYLOV (translator).

    Natan mudryi. Dramaticheskoe stikhotvorenie … perevod...

    St Petersburg, Stasiulevich, 1875.

    First edition in Russian of Lessing’s Nathan der Weise, very rare.

    £2000

  2. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    Ezra Pound, un saggio e tre disegni.

    Milan, all’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1958.

    First edition, an hors serie copy (from numbered edition of 1000), a translation by Pound’s daughter, Mary de Rachewiltz, of an essay that first appeared in Pound’s 65th birthday festschrift in 1950; this translation was published in part ‘to celebrate Ezra Pound’s return to Italy’.

    £75

  3. [LIDIN, Vladimir Germanovich, editor.]

    Literaturnaia Rossiia. Sbornik sovremennoi russkoi prozy pod redaktsiei Vl. Lidina...

    Moscow, “Novye vekhi”, 1924.

    First edition of an avant-garde collection of short stories and excerpts from novels, with autobiographical sketches and bibliographies by each of the twenty-eight contributors, all written especially for this collection.

    £1500

  4. LIVSHITS, Benedikt Konstantinovich.

    Krotonskii polden’ [High Noon at Kroton].

    Moscow, “Uzel”, 1928.

    First collected edition. Livshits’ fifth and final book of verse, after which he turned increasingly to translation work.

    £600

  5. [LOQUET, Marie-Françoise].

    Voyage de Sophie et d’Eulalie, au Palais du vrai bonheur; ouvrage pour servir de guide dans les voies...

    Paris, Charles-Pierre Berton, 1781.

    First edition of this rare utopian voyage written by a woman for a readership of women.

    £1500

  6. LUNACHARKSII, Anatolii Vaslievich.

    Piat’ farsov dlia liubitelei [Five farces for amateurs].

    St Petersburg, “Shipovnik”, 1907.

    Very rare first edition of five early plays, written for amateur performance, but rarely staged: ‘Sverkhchelovek’ (Superman), ‘Esche skvernyi anekdot’ (Another nasty anecdote), ‘Beglyi politik’ (The fugitive politician), ‘Bomba’ (Bomb), and ‘Obshchestvo maloi skorosti’ (Low-speed...

    £500

  7. [LUNACHARSKII, Anatolii Vasilievich, and Sergei Mitrofanovich GORODETSKII, editors.]

    Styk. Pervyi sbornik stikhov Moskovskogo Tsekha...

    Moscow, Moscow Guild of Poets, 1925.

    First edition of an anthology edited by Lunacharsky and Gorodetsky, including poems by Pavel Antokolsky, Bryusov, Bely, Pasternak, Aleksandr Shiryaevet, Mikhail Zenkevich, and others. Pasternak’s contribution, ‘Spektorskii’, was first published complete in book form in 1931.

    £250

  8. MACHADO, Antonio.

    Juan de Mairena. Sentencias, donaires, apuntes y recuerdos de un profesor apócrifo.

    Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1936.

    First edition of this philosophical and poetic miscellany attributed to an apocryphal professor Juan de Mairena.

    £650

  9. MAGRE, Maurice.

    Les trois métiers de Jeannet. Les bons tours d’Yan.

    Paris, Hachette (Bibliothèque des écoles et des familles), [s.d. (but 1911?)].

    Two scarce children’s stories, published as part of Hachette’s ‘Bibliothèque des écoles et des familles’.

    £125

  10. MAINE DE BIRAN. [MARIE FRANÇOIS PIERRE GONTHIER DE BIRAN.]

    Influence de l’Habitude sur la Faculté de Penser.

    Paris, Henrichs, 1803.

    First edition of Maine de Biran’s first major work, in which he draws a distinction between what he calls passive habits, i.e. sensations and impressions which become dulled with repetition, and active habits, i.e. those which are conscious, and willed. “The effect of this, which was borne out by...

    £2000

  11. [MALTA.] 

    Eruditissima istoria dell’assedio fatto dalli Turchi all città di Malta. 

    Naples, [c. 1800?]. 

    Scarce poem on the 1565 Great Siege of Malta, when around 2400 Knights Hospitallers and Maltese inhabitants repelled an Ottoman invasion lead by Dragut and Mustafa Pasha.  Library catalogues credit the work to Innico Grivaccio. 

    £650

  12. MANDELSTAM, Osip Emilyevich.

    О Поэзии: СборникСтатей [O poezii: Sbornik statei; ‘On poetry: A collection...

    Leningrad, Academia, 1928.

    First edition of this collection of essays on poetry and the arts, by the prominent Acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938). ‘[Mandelstam] regarded the period during which he wrote these articles (1922-26) as the worst in his life. It was a period of decline, and in repudiating it altogether,...

    £850

  13. MARIVAUX, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de.

    Le Paysan parvenu: or, the fortunate Peasant. Being Memoirs of the Life of Mr. ––––....

    London: Printed for John Brindley … Charles Corbett … and Richard Wellington … 1735

    First edition in English, originally published in French in the Hague in 1734-5. This is the second of the two important novels by Marivaux, which broke new ground in the art of writing fiction. ‘Where La Vie de Marianne belongs to the moralizing and sentimental romance tradition, Le Paysan...

    £650

  14. MARKISH, Peretz Davidovich.

    Rubezh. Izbrannye stikhi [Threshold. Selected poems]. Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1933.

    [Selected poems]. Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1933.

    First edition in Russian of the first book by the Soviet Yiddish poet and novelist Peretz Markish (1895-1952), a collection of poems, Shveln (Threshold, Kiev, 1919) which established his reputation as one of the most important Yiddish poets of his time.

    £1800

  15. MARKISH, Peretz Davidovich.

    Brat’ia [Brothers].

    Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1935.

    First edition in Russian of Markish’s epic poem Brider (Brothers, Kiev, 1929), an optimistic work glorifying the Communist regime.

    £1200

  16. MARKISH, Peretz Davidovich.

    Stikhotvoreniia i poemy. Perevod s evreiskogo [Poems, long and short. Translated from the Hebrew].

    Moscow, Ogiz, 1945.

    First edition, a collection of late poems by the pre-eminent Soviet Yiddish poet and novelist Peretz Markish; the translations are by several hands.

    £300

  17. MARLOWE, Christopher, and Konstantin BAL’MONT, translator.

    Tragicheskaia istoriia doktora Fausta [The Tragedy...

    Moscow, K.F. Nekrasov, 1912.

    First edition in book form, scarce, of Balmont’s translation of Marlowe’s Faustus, first published over two issues of the journal Zhizn in 1898.

    £500

  18. MARSHAK, Samuil Iakovlevich, and Mikhail TSEKHANOVSKII.

    Почта [Post].

    Leningrad, ‘Pechatnyi Dvor’, 1931.

    Sixth edition (first published by Raduga in 1927) of an attractive Marshak children’s story, with illustrations by the artist and animator Tsekhanovsky.

    £750

  19. [MARTINI, Ferdinand].

    Breife. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt.

    Soröe 1768, gedruckt bey Jonas Lindgreen, Ritterlich Akademischer Buchdrucker.

    First edition of a rare, radical indictment of serfdom in Denmark, ostensibly ‘translated from the English’.

    £750

  20. MATTHIEU, Pierre, et al.

    Tablettes ou quatrains de la vie et de la mort. Par Pierre Matthieu, conseiller du roy.

    Première [– troisième] partie … Rouen, Jacques Cailloué, 1628.

    Very rare pocket-sized Rouen edition of verses on life and death by the poet and royal historiographer Pierre Matthieu (1563–1621), here printed with further poems by Guy du Faur de Pibrac, Antoine Favre and others. All early editions are extremely rare, many known in a single copy.

    £3000