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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. GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich.

    Farforovyi pavil’on. Kitaiskie Stikhi [The Porcelain Pavilion. Chinese poems].

    Petrograd, “Mysl’”, 1922.

    Second edition (first 1918) of Gumilev’s paraphrases of Chinese and Indonesian lyrics, published the year after his death.

    £100

  2. GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich.

    Shater. Stikhi [The tent. Verses].

    Revel [i.e. Tallinn], ‘Bibliofil’, [1921].

    First illustrated edition. ‘The publishing house claims that this edition was made from the manuscript handed over by Gumilev in June 1921, the year he was arrested and executed. It contains more material than the [first edition published the same year]’ (Kilgour 427, note).

    £250

  3. GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich (translator). GAUTIER, Théophile.

    Emali i kamei [Émaux et camées].

    [St Petersburg, M. V. Popov, 1914.]

    First edition, very rare, of Gumilev’s first published volume of translation, and Gautier’s first appearance in Russian. This is the only contemporary edition; it first received a reprint (in a bilingual edition) some seventy-five years later.

    £850

  4. GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich.

    Kolchan. 4-ia kniga stikhov. Izdanie vtoroe [The Quiver. Fourth book of Poems. Second edition]....

    [Second edition]. Petropolis, Berlin, 1923.

    Second edition of the collection of poems with which Gumilev ‘reached the peak of his powers’ (Bristol, A History of Russian Poetry, p. 207).

    £250

  5. [GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich, Osip MANDELSTAM, et al, translators.]

    Поэты французского Возрождения...

    Leningrad, Goslitizdat, 1938.

    First edition of a rare anthology of Russian translations of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century poems by Villon, Marot, Ronsard, Du Bellay, and others. Two of the Villon translations are attributed in the index to Mandelstam, but are in fact by Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev (1886–1921), husband of Anna...

    £1750

  6. HAMSUN, Knut.

    Ny Jord. Roman.

    Copenhagen, P. G. Philipsens Forlag, 1893.

    First edition of Shallow Soil, an early novel by the Norwegian nobel prize-winning author. Hamsun himself described the novel as being ‘about Norwegian youth’, ‘full of symbolism, but so little Ibsenish, I hope, that it can be understood.’

    £200

  7. HAMSUN, Knut.

    Munken Vendt.

    Copenhagen, Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, 1902.

    First edition of the verse drama Friar Vendt.

    £300

  8. HARINGER, Jakob.

    Die Einsiedelei. Ein Stundenblatt. Nr. VIII-XV [Poems].

    Amsterdam, Christof Brundel Verlag, [1930].

    First edition, rare, of a collection of several short pieces by the Expressionist poet Jakob Haringer. It includes: ‘Chinesische Strofen’, ‘Unbekannter Dichter/ Werke für einen Freund’, ‘Werke aus dem ägyptischen’, ‘Lieder von den Salomo-Inseln’, ‘Werke nach Ronsard’ and ‘Werke...

    £250

  9. HEINE, Heinrich.

    Zur Geschichte der neueren schönen Literatur in Deutschland.

    Paris & Leipzig, Heideloff und Campe, 1833.

    First edition of a work on contemporary German literature, intended as a sort of continuation of Madame de Staël’s De L’Allemagne. It first appeared as a series of articles in the Paris journal L’Europe littéraire. This first edition was banned on publication, and is very rare. A second, expanded...

    £1250

  10. HEINE, Heinrich.

    Französische Zustände.

    Hamburg, Hoffmann und Campe, 1833.

    First edition in book form of a series of newspaper articles, first published in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, discussing cultural and political developments in France. It was Heine’s first work of political journalism.

    £550

  11. HERBERT, Zbigniew.

    Struna Światła [String of light].

    [Warsaw], Czytelnik, [1956].

    Rare first edition of the influential Polish poet, playwright and essayist’s first book, a collection of forty poems printed in an edition of 1205 copies under the title String of light.

    £450

  12. [HERISSANT, Louis Théodore].

    Le fablier françois, ou élite des meilleurs fables depuis La Fontaine.

    Paris, Lottin le jeune, 1771.

    First edition, rare, of what has a claim to be the first comprehensive collection of French fables from the period after La Fontaine, assembled by the diplomat, lawyer, and historian Louis-Théodore Herissant (1743–1811). Collecting together fables from writers both famous (Voltaire, J.B. Rousseau,...

    £650

  13. HERNÁNDEZ, Miguel.

    Viento del pueblo. Poesia en la guerra.

    Valencia, Ediciones ‘Socorro Rojo’, 1937.

    First edition of a scarce collection of Civil War poems by the ‘soldier-poet’ Miguel Hernández, our copy from the library of Stephen Spender, who met Hernández in Madrid in the summer of 1937 and would champion and translate his work.

    £1750

  14. [HERZEN, Aleksandr Ivanovich]. ISKANDER (pseud.).

    Prervannye razskazy… Izdanie vtoroe - ispravlennoe avtorom [Interrupted...

    London, Trübner & Co., 1857.

    Second, corrected edition of this collection of four short stories, which had initially been published in Russian periodicals, and were first collected and published as one volume in London in 1854.

    £1250

  15. HESSE, Hermann.

    Frühe Prosa.

    Zurich, Fretz & Wasmuth, [1948].

    First edition of this collection, with new prefatory material by Hesse himself. It brings together three prose works from before the publication of Peter Camenzind (1904): Eine Stude hinter Mitternacht (1899), Der Novalis (written 1899–1902, published 1907), and Hermann...

    £100

  16. HESSE, Hermann.

    Siddhartha. Eine indische Dichtung.

    Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag, 1922.

    First edition of Hesse’s most celebrated work, the beautiful story of a young Brahmin’s search for the meaning of life on earth at the time of the Gautama Buddha.

    £1200

  17. HOFMANNSTHAL, Hugo von.

    Die Aegyptische Helena. Oper in zwei Aufzügen.

    [Leipzig, Mainzer Presse for Insel-Verlag, 1928.]

    First edition of Hofmannsthal’s text for Richard Strauss’s opera, one of 200 numbered copies – Hofmannsthal himself considered it to be his finest libretto.

    £750

  18. HUGO, Victor.

    Notre-Dame de Paris. Par Victor Hugo. Troisième edition … Tome premier [– deuxième].

    Paris, Charles Gosselin, 1831.

    First edition, third issue, of Victor Hugo’s great historical novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of 275 copies printed.

    £7500

  19. IVANOV, Georgii Vladimirovich.

    Lampada. Sobranie stikhotvorenii, Kniga pervaia [The icon-lamp. Collected poems. Book one (All...

    Petrograd, [“Mysl’”], 1922.

    First edition of Ivanov’s last collection of poems before his emigration.

    £300

  20. IVANOV, Viacheslav Ivanovich.

    Mladenchestvo [Infancy].

    St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1918.

    First edition. The poet, translator, critic and scholar Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949) was one of the leaders of the Symbolist movement and its principal theorist.

    £600