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.
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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
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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
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[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
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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
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MAURIAC, François.
Le Noeud de Vipères. Roman.
[Paris], Bernard Grasset, [1932].
First edition, one of 112 numbered copies on vélin pur fil. Le Noeud de Vipères is one of the major French Catholic novels of the 20th century: a marital drama, depicting an old lawyer's rancour toward his family, his passion for money, and his final conversion. ‘Written shortly after the resolution...
£550
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MELECRINIS, Maria Teresa.
Le voci del cuore a Maria Teresa Melecrinis dei baroni di Ioppolo e Coccorino che a di 6 luglio 1846...
Naples, stamperia dell' Iride, 1846.
Very rare collection of odes and sonnets composed to mark the entry of Maria Teresa Melecrinis into the Benedictine monastery of San Paolo at Sorrento.
£175
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[MELO, Antonio de.]
La Famosa y temeraria compañia de Rompe Columnas. Traduzida, y acrescentada, por el Capitan Flegetonte, comico...
Paris, Joseph Cotterau, 1609.
First edition, rare, a loose translation by Antonio de Melo of the burlesque Della compagnia de Tagliacantoni (1601), by Tommaso Buoni.
£4500
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MÉRIMÉE, Prosper.
La Chambre bleue. Nouvelle dédiée à Madame de la Rhune.
Brussels, Librairie de la Place de la Monnaie, 1872.
Very rare first procurable edition of Mérimée’s novella La Chambre bleue, one of 129 copies printed. The first edition (‘Biarritz, 1866’ = Paris, Jules Claye, 1871) was published in only three copies.
£500
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MESHCHERSKII, Elim Petrovich.
Les boréales par B. de G. et le prince Elim Mestscherski …
Paris, Bellizard, Dufour et Cie, 1839.
First edition of a rare French anthology of Russian poets, including early translations of six poems by Pushkin.
£800
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MESHCHERSKY, Elim Petrovich, Prince.
Les roses noires par le prince Élim Mestscherskï.
Paris, Amyot, 1845.
First edition of this posthumous collection, which includes a short dramatisation of Pushkin’s The Gypsies, ‘un charmant poëme d’Alexandre Pouschkinn, le grand écrivain que pleure la Russie’.
£600
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MILHAUD, Darius.
Le boeuf sur le toit, ou The nothing doing bar. Farce imaginée et réglée par Jean Cocteau – costumes de G....
Paris, Editions de la Sirène, 1920.
First edition of Milhaud’s Le boeuf sur le toit, Op. 58 (The ox on the roof, or The nothing-doing bar), a surrealist ballet-farce which became extremely popular in 1920s Paris.
£2400
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MILL, John Stuart, and Nikolai Gavrilovich CHERNYSHEVSKY, translator.
Osnovaniia politicheskoi ekonomii s nekotorymi...
St. Petersburg, [n.p.], 1865.
First complete edition of Mill’s Principles in Russian, translated by the economist, nihilist and social critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828-1889), ‘corrected and expanded from the most recent (fifth) edition of Mill’s book, published in 1864 in New York’ (‘From the publisher’, our...
£3750
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MILTON, John, and Manuel ALTOLAGUIRRE, translator.
Fragmento de El Paraíso perdido. Traducción y nota de Manuel...
Madrid, Cruz y Raya, 1935.
A rare off-print from Cruz y Raya, the periodical edited by José Bergamín. This is the first appearance in print of Altolaguirre’s translation from Book II of Milton’s Paradise Lost.
£150
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MOLAJONI, Bartolomeo.
Alla neogama donzella Marianna Molajoni negli Sforza, Bartolomeo Molajoni germano dirigge il seguente sonetto...
Viterbo, brothers Poggiarelli, 1811.
Seemingly unrecorded sonnet addressed to the newlywed Marianna Molajoni by her brother Bartolomeo and dedicated to the sottoprefetto of Viterbo, Giulio Zelli Pazzaglia.
£275
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MONTLOSIER, Francois-Dominique de Reynaud, comte de.
Le peuple Anglais bouffi d’orgueil, de bière et de thé, jugé...
Paris, chez Surosne, An IX (1803).
First edition, scarce on the market, of a virulent and amusing anti-English tirade by the French politician Montlosier (1755–1838), written on the eve of the Napoleonic Wars.
£375
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MORENO VILLA, José.
Carambas. (I.a serie [– 3.a serie]).
Madrid, Ediciones Posibles, 1931.
First edition of the complete series of Moreno Villa’s Carambas.
£450
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MOROZOV, Mikhail Mikhailovich.
O’tao. Drama v 2-kh deistviiakh [Drama in Two Acts].
Moscow, Sozvezdie, 1921.
First edition of a short play, set in Japan, by the Shakespeare scholar and translator M.M. Morozov (1897–1952). It was premiered on 15 June 1921.
£100
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MOROZOV, Nikolai Aleksandrovich.
Zvezdnyia pesni … [Celestial Songs].
Moscow, “Zadruga”, 1920.
First published in 1910, this second, enlarged edition is the ‘first complete edition’ of Morozov’s poetry, bringing the collection up-to-date (i.e. 1919). We offer volume I; a second appeared in 1921.
£120
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[MURAT, J.-B. de.]
La destinée d’une jolie femme, poème érotique, en six chants, par J.B… de M…
Paris, Langlois for Mongie, An XI (1803).
First and only edition, very scarce, of this humorous moralising tale of love and loss in verse, intended for a female readership and hidden under the ‘transparent veil’ of erotic poetry.
£650
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MUSIL, Robert.
Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männer. Posse in drei Akten.
Berlin, Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1924.
Rare first edition of Musil’s (1880–1942) early farce, featuring an abduction, extramarital affairs, and a staged murder.
£500