Advanced search

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.

 
Sort by
Author
Price
Date
Title

  1. LEBEDEV, V.P.

    175 godovshchina Pervago Kadetskago korpusa. 17 fevralia 1907 g. [175th Anniversary of the First Corps of Cadets,...

    [St Petersburg,] Press of the First Corps of Cadets, 1906.

    Only edition of this collection of poems commemorating the 175th anniversary of the First Corps of Cadets, set up under Anna Ivanovna. Each of the ten ‘scenes in verse’ is narrated by a cadet, once for each Tsar under which the Corps has served.

    £180

  2. LEONOV, Leonid Maksimovich.

    Begstvo Mistera Mak-Kinli. Kinopovest’ [Mr MacKinley’s Flight. A Screen-play].

    Moscow, Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1963.

    First edition of Leonov’s screenplay satirising Western capitalist society, used by Mikhail Shveister in 1975 for his film of the same name, with a presentation inscription from the author on the front endleaf, signed and dated 1964.

    £100

  3. LEONOV, Leonid Maksimovich.

    Petushikhinskii prolom [The Break-up of Petushikha].

    Moscow, M. & S. Shabashnikov, 1923.

    First edition of an early short story about the impact of the Revolution on the clergy and the peasantry.

    £300

  4. LEONOV, Leonid Maksimovich.

    Tuatamur.

    Moscow, M. & S. Sabashnikov, 1924.

    First edition: one of Leonov’s early stories, the tragic, sometimes savage tale of a Tartar khan who shares in the victory over the Russians at Kalka (1224, the first invasion of Russia by the Mongol hordes), only to lose his beloved Ytmar, the doomed warrior daughter of Genghiz Khan. The narrative...

    £450

  5. LESKOV, Nikolai Semenovich.

    Soboriane. Stargorodskaia khronika [Cathedral Folk. Chronicle of Stargorod]. In: Russkii Vestnik,...

    Moscow, University Press, March - July 1872.

    The first appearance in print of all five parts of Leskov’s best known novel (or ‘chronicle’ as he preferred to call it), Cathedral Folk, published in instalments, between March and July 1872, in Russkii Vestnik.

    £2500

  6. 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

  7. [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

  8. 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

  9. [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

  10. 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

  11. [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

  12. 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

  13. 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

  14. [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

  15. 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

  16. MARINO, Giambattista.

    La Murtoleide fischiate del cavalier Marino con la Marineide risate del Murtola.

    ‘Norinbergh’ [i.e. Venice], Ioseph Stamphier, 1619.

    Rare first edition of the manifesto of Italian Baroque poetry, appearing in the bitterly satirical ‘literary feud’ between the leading Italian baroque poet Giambattista Marino and his adversary, Gasparo Murtola. Marino, who thrived in his notoriously misbehaving public persona, had been banned...

    £900

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. 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

  20. 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