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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. TAMAMSHEV, Aleksandr Artem’evich.

    Iz plamia i sveta [From the Flame and Light].

    Petrograd, [R. Golike & A. Vil’borg,] 1918.

    First edition. The title is taken from a poem by Lermontov (Est’ rechi—znachen’e / Temno il’ nichtozhno … ‘There are speeches – whose meaning / Is obscure or insignificant / But it is impossible to hear them without being moved … From the flame and light / The born word...

    £250

  2. TARSIS, Valerii Iakovlevich.

    Skazanie o sinei mukhe. Krasnoe i chernoe [The legend of the bluebottle. Red and black].

    Frankfurt am Main, Posev, 1963.

    First edition in Russian of Tarsis’ first work to be published abroad, a political allegory of a philosopher who kills a fly and then asks himself why he cannot likewise kill people who get in his way.

    £90

  3. TASSO, Torquato.

    Aminta; Favola boscareccia …

    In Glasgua, Della Stampa di Roberto ed Andrea Foulis, 1753.

    First Foulis Press edition of Tasso’s famous pastoral verse play of 1573, an attractive production with plates from a miniature French edition by the French artist Sebastien le Clerc, acquired by Robert Foulis on his European travels.

    £125

  4. TOLSTOY, Aleksei Nikolaevich.

    Lirika.

    St Petersburg, [S.M. Muller,] 1907.

    First edition, very rare: ‘the first published work of the official novelist of the Soviet Union’ (Kilgour).

    £1000

  5. TOLSTOY, Count Aleksei Konstantinovich.

    Kniaz’ Serebrianyi. Povest’ vremen Ioanna Groznago. S predisloviem kn. D. N. Tserteleva....

    Moscow, V. G. Got’e [Gautier], 1892.

    First edition thus, printed on papier vélin and signed by the publisher, one of a number of bibliophile editions of Russian classics brought out by Gautier in the 1890s. Copies were also printed on japon.

    £1600

  6. TOLSTOY, Count Aleksei Konstantinovich.

    Smert’ Ioanna Groznago, tragediia v piati deistviiakh [The Death of Ivan the Terrible,...

    St Petersburg, Naval Ministry Press, 1866.

    First edition: the first in the great trilogy of plays by the foremost Russian historical dramatist. It was translated into English verse, ‘with the author’s permission’, in 1869.

    £2000

  7. TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.

    Khoziain i rabotnik. Povest’ [Master and Man. A Story].

    St Petersburg, V.S. Balashev and Co., 10 March 1895.

    One of the earliest printings of one of Tolstoy’s greatest late short stories, revolving around a Damascene moment in the life of an avaricious landowner.

    £3000

  8. [TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.] BIRIUKOV, Pavel Ivanovich (editor).

    Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi. Biografiia. Sostavil P. Biriukov...

    Moscow, Pechkovsky, ‘Posrednik’, 1906[-8].

    First edition, rare, of the first authorised biography of Tolstoy (then aged seventy-eight), by his friend, secretary and disciple Pavel Biriukov (1860–1931), drawing on much unpublished archival material and written in personal consultation with Tolstoy over a period of at least six years.

    £1800

  9. TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.

    I. Pis’mo k Kitaitsu. (Oktabria 1906 g.) II. Kitaiskaia mudrost’. Mysli kitaiskikh myslitelei, sobrannyia...

    Moscow, “Posrednika”, 1907.

    First edition, very rare, of Tolstoy’s open letter to the Malaysian-Chinese man of letters Gu Hongming, who had sent several of his works to Tolstoy, including Papers from a Viceroy’s Yamen (1905).

    £2250

  10. [TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.] ORLOV, Nikolai.

    Russkie Muzhiki. Kartiny khudozhnika N. Orlova, s predisloviem Leva Nikolaevicha Tolstogo...

    St Petersburg, R. Golik & A. Vilborg, 1909.

    First and only edition of this album of nine black and white reproductions of folk-art paintings by the peasant artist Nikolai Orlov, prefaced by an 8-page introduction by Tolstoy. The realistic portrayal of Russian society, especially of the peasantry, was a cause beloved by Tolstoy, and is a key feature...

    £1200

  11. TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.

    Posmertnyia zapiski startsa Fedora Kuz’micha umershago 20-go ianvaria 1864 goda v Sibiri, bliz goroda...

    St Petersburg, V. Vrublevskii, 1912.

    First edition, very rare, of an unfinished story, begun in 1905, exploring the popular legend that Tsar Alexander I had staged his own death in 1825 and had gone into hiding as the hermit Fedor Kuz’mich.

    £1750

  12. 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

  13. TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.

    Zhivoi trup. Drama v 6 deistviiakh i 12 kartinakh [A Living Corpse. A drama in 6 acts and 12 scenes].

    Moscow, A. Ia. Petrov, [1911].

    One of the earliest printings of Tolstoy’s Living Corpse, one of a number of editions in 1911, the year it was first staged, posthumously, at the Moscow Arts Theatre, offered with a traditional gypsy folk song included in the performance of Act II of The Living Corpse, first edition...

    £2750

  14. [TORGA, Miguel, pseud.] ROCHA, Adolpho Correia da.

    Abismo. Poemas.

    [Coimbra, “Atlantida”, 1932.]

    First (and only) edition of one of the very rare early collections of poetry of Miguel Torga, published under his own name while he was still a medical student in Coimbra.

    £3500

  15. [TRENTO, Giulio].

    Gli spiriti. Paragoni poetici. Dialogo d’un giovine, ed un cinico dell’andare alla Guerra. Diario mensuale...

    Treviso, G. Trento, [1788].

    Only edition, mentioned only in one or two pieces of local antiquarian history but not recorded in any of the usual library catalogues. An ephemeral publication containing a short story, a literary divertissement linking passages from Parini’s Mattino with an unidentified poem on gambling and an ode...

    £300

  16. TRETIAKOV, Sergei Mikhailovich.

    Rychi, Kitai! Stikhi [Roar, China! Poems].

    Moscow, “Ogonek”, 1926.

    First edition, very rare. Tretyakov wrote these lyrics during an extended visit to China in 1924, during which he collected material for his subsequent work on contemporary China. The name of the title poem ('Rychi, Kitai!') was used again for Tretyakov’s famous avant-garde play of the same...

    £350

  17. TUGAN-BARANOSKIĬ, M. I.

    Sovremennyĭ sotsializm v svoem istoricheskom razvitii.

    St. Petersburg, Buduschnost’, 1906.

    First edition of Tugan-Baranoskiĭ’s work on socialism; it was translated into English as Modern Socialism in its Historical Development by M. I. Redmount and published in 1910. After dismissal from his position at the University of St. Petersburg in 1899 for ‘political unreliability’, Tugan-Baranoskiĭ...

    £350

  18. TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, Mikhail Ivanovich.

    Величайшая въ мірѣ коммунистическая организація...

    Moscow, Vserossiiskii Tsentral’nii Coiuz Potrebitel’nykh Obshchestv’, 1918.

    Rare Russian language tract on ‘The Greatest Communist Society in the World (Doukhobor Society),’ which left Russia for Canada in 1898-9, aided by Leo Tolstoy.

    £250

  19. TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, Mikhail Ivanovich.

    Russkaia fabrika v proshlom’ i nastoiashchem’ [The Russian factory in the past and present].

    St Petersburg, L. F. Pantelev, 1898.

    First edition thus, originally issued as the author’s doctoral dissertation in 1894, a historic-economic analysis of Russian factories up to the 19th century. Beginning with a long introductory chapter on the 18th century, the work analyses factory development before and after the emancipation of the...

    £850

  20. TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, Mikhail Ivanovich.

    Teoreticheskiia osnovyi Marksizma.

    St Petersburg, I. N. Skorokhodov, 1905.

    First Russian edition of Theoretical Foundations of Marxism; a German edition, Theoretische Grundlagen der Marxismus, was published in the same year.

    £750