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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. GRASS, Günter.

    The Danzig Trilogy [The Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse and Dog Years].

    New York, Pantheon & Harcourt Brace & World, 1962-65.

    First US editions, all translated by Ralph Manheim, and first published in the original German in 1959, 1961 and 1963.

    £500

  2. GRASS, Günter.

    Selected Poems … With translations from the German by Michael Hamburger and Christopher Middleton.

    New York, Harcourt Brace & World Inc., 1966.

    First US edition, with the original German on facing pages, of poems originally appearing in Die Vorzüge der Windhühner (1956) and Gleisdreieck (1960).

    £50

  3. GRIGOROVICH, Dmitrii Vasil’evich.

    Povesti i razskazy … Chast’ pervaia [– shestaia] [Stories and tales. Part I [– VI]].

    Moscow, E. Barfknekht, 1858, & V. Grachev, 1859.

    First collected edition of Grigorovich’s fiction, including the important stories Derevnia (The Village, 1846), Anton Goremyka (1847), Rybaki (The Fishermen, 1853) and Shkola gostepriimstva (The School of Hospitality, 1855).

    £2000

  4. GUARINI, Giovanni Battista.

    Il Pastor fido, tragicommedia pastorale … Ora in questa XXVII impressione di curiose, & dotte Annotationi...

    Venice, Giovanni Battista Ciotti, 1602.

    Revised edition, the last lifetime revision, of Guarini’s immensely popular pastoral tragicomedy, passed from father to son and with a touching ownership inscription celebrating the latter’s late wife.

    £800

  5. [GUARINI, Giovanni Battista.]

    Il Pastor Fido.

    ‘In Parigi, appresso Tomaso Iolly, 1706’.

    Scarce Parisian edition of Guarini’s immensely popular ‘pastoral tragi-comedy’, charmingly illustrated by Antonio Luciani.

    £175

  6. GUERRERO, Lila.

    Mis devociones.

    Buenos Aires, Ediciones Aconcagua, 1965.

    First and only edition of this collection of thirty-two poems, inscribed on the half-title ‘para Elsa y Luís Aragón mi olvidado corazon a la intemperie, recordandolos con cariño fervoroso / Lila’.

    £400

  7. GÜIRALDES, Ricardo.

    Raucho. Momentos de una junventud contemporánea.

    Buenos Aires, Imprenta de Jose Tragant … 1917.

    First edition, scarce, Güiraldes’s first novel, a tale of gaucho life inspired by his experiences as a boy on the family ranch; inscribed ‘Para Mlle Matilda Pomès / Ricardo Güiraldes’.

    £2000

  8. 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

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. [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

  13. 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

  14. HAMSUN, Knut.

    Munken Vendt.

    Copenhagen, Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, 1902.

    First edition of the verse drama Friar Vendt.

    £300

  15. 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

  16. 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

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. [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

  20. [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