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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STRINDBERG, August.
Tschandala. Berättelse fran 1600–talet.
Stockholm, C. & E. Gernandts Förlags, 1897.
First Swedish edition: a Gothic tale, set in Skane thirty years after the Swedes took the province from the Danes in 1658.
£250
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STRINDBERG, Johan August.
Trefaldighetsnatten.
Stockholm, Albert Bonniers Förlag, [1909].
First separate edition of a collection of poems which was first published in the collection Fagervik och Skamsund in 1902.
£200
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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[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
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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
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[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
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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
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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
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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
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[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
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[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
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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
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TURGENEV, Ivan Sergeevich.
Nov’. Roman [Virgin Soil. A Novel].
Moscow, 1878.
First edition printed in Russia of Turgenev’s novel about the Populists of the 1870s. It was first published in the journal Vestnik Evropy in 1877, followed shortly afterwards by an edition published in Leipzig.
£1500
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TURGENEV, Ivan Sergeevich.
Stikhotvoreniia [Poems].
St Petersburg, [V Tipografii Glazunova], 1885.
First edition: a collected volume of Turgenev’s poems omitted from the Complete collected works of 1883.
£1200