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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. PASTERNAK, Boris Leonidovich.

    Zemnoi prostor [Expanses of Land].

    Moscow, “Sovetskii pisatel’”, 1945.

    First edition of Pasternak’s war poems.

    £400

  2. 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...

    £750

  3. PAZZI, Antonio de, and Torquato TASSO. 

    Stanze inedite di Antonio de Pazzi e di Torquato Tasso in biasimo ed in lode delle...

    Venice, Picotti, 1810.

    Scarce first edition of verses ‘in blame and in praise of women’ by Antonio de Pazzi and Torquato Tasso, edited by the eminent antiquary and librarian Jacopo Morelli (1745–1819) from a previously unpublished manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, and dedicated to Baron Antonio Mulazzani...

    £200

  4. 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

  5. PIEROTTI, A. 

    Il cervello e la difesa delle donne sestine giocose ... precedute da indirizzo, e dedica in vario metro. 

    Florence, N. Fabbrini, 1842. 

    First and only edition, very rare, of this misogynistic poem by the Florentine poet Pierotti, in which he pretends to explore the female brain with reference to Galen, accusing women of, for example, greed, theft, cunning, vanity, and irascibility.  The second part is a somewhat patronising defense...

    £375

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. ‘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

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

    Shtoss v zhizn’ [Shtoss in life].

    Berlin, Petropolis, [1929].

    First edition, a collection of three stories.

    £250

  10. ‘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

  11. [PIRANDELLO, Luigi.]

    LO VECCHIO MUSTI, Manlio. Bibliografia di Pirandello.

    Verona, Mondadori, 1937.

    First edition of this authoritative bibliography of Pirandello, published just a year after his death. It includes a long introductory essay by Massimo Bontempelli.

    £100

  12. 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...

    £4800

  13. 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

  14. PITTER, Přemysl.

    Domovu i exilu [Home and Exile].

    London, Čechoslovák-FCI, [1956].

    First editions, association copies, of a series of radio transcripts by the humanitarian Protestant lay preacher and educator Přemysl Pitter (1895–1976), often described as the ‘forgotten Czech Schindler’, owned by the Czech-Jewish poet, novelist, and Holocaust survivor H.G. Adler.

    £850

  15. PLANAS, D. Eusebio.

    Historia de una mujer. Album de cincuenta cromos.

    Barcelona, Juan Aleu y Fugarull, 1880.

    First edition. A chronicle in pictures of the life of a beautiful modern woman, and her adventures and misadventures with men: in front of fashionable Madrid shop-fronts, in her boudoir, on the balcony, on the stage and in the dressing-room, at balls and dinner parties, in a train, the Alps, the 1878...

    £2000

  16. [POETRY.] 

    ‘Trattato della [poesia Toscana]’. 

    [Asti?, 1780-1782.] 

    A manuscript treatise on the method of composing poetry in Italian, with numerous examples from renowned authors and eight apparently unpublished poems about horse-racing, with references to Arabian, Sardinian, English, and African horses, as well as to a firework display. 

    £750

  17. [POETS’ GUILD.]

    Tsekh Poetov I [ and II-III].

    Berlin, S. Efron, 1922[-3].

    First edition. The first Poets’ Guild had been formed in 1911 with members including Gumilev, Gorodetsky and Mandelstam, the core of whom became known as the Acmeists.

    £1250

  18. [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

  19. [POUND.]

    FROBENIUS, Leo. Il Liuto di Gassire. Legenda Africana con una nota di Ezra Pound.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1961].

    First edition, translated into Italian from the German by Siegfried Walter di Rachewiltz, Pound’s grandson (b. 1947), and with a ten-page note by Pound. A presentation copy, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey Bridson with the compliments of Siegfried W. de Rachewiltz / Brunnenburg 30. 5. 61’.

    £100

  20. POUND, Ezra, and Ernest FENELLOSA.

    Introduzione ai Nô, con un drama in un atto di Motokiyo: Kagekiyo.

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

    Third edition, translations of Pound’s ‘Introduction’ and one play from Certain Noble Plays of Japan by his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. This third edition added ‘Un intervallo di 40 anni’ by Pound, dated November 1958.

    £30