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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. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Yaël.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1967].

    First edition, one of 30 numbered copies on vélin pur fil.

    £500

  2. JABÈS, Edmond.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1972].

    First edition, one of the issue of ordinary paper.

    £100

  3. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Les Pieds en l’Air. Poèmes précedés d’une lettre de Max Jacob. Couverture et dessins de Mayo.

    Cairo – Alexandria, “La Semaine Égyptienne”, [1934].

    First edition. One of 200 unnumbered copies on papier bouffant, part of a total edition of 373 copies. ‘… The Cairo/Alexandria journal La Semaine Égyptienne became Jabès’s publisher with Maman in 1932 and Les Pieds en l’air and Arches poétiques in 1934 and...

    £450

  4. JAYADEVA, and Friedrich MAJER (translator).

    Gita-Govinda, ein Indisches Singspiel ... aus der Ursprache ins Englische...

    Weimar, Landes-Industrie-Comptoir, 1802.

    First and only separate edition of this uncommon German translation of Gita Govinda, a ‘devoutly erotic poem of the twelfth-century Bengali poet Jayadeva’ (ODNB).

    £475

  5. JIMÉNEZ, Juan Ramón.

    Pastorales. La tristeza del campo – El valle – La estrella del pastor – 1905.

    Madrid, Biblioteca Renacimiento, 1911.

    First edition: a collection of poems from Jiménez’s first period.

    £650

  6. JUSSIEU, Laurent Pierre de.

    Antoine et Maurice. Ouvrage qui a obtenu le prix proposé par la Société Royale pour l’amélioration...

    Paris, L. Colas, 1821.

    First edition, rare, of this unsurprisingly moralising novel by the writer, geologist, and natural historian Laurent Pierre de Jussieu (1792-1866), written in response to a competition held by the Royal Society of the Improvement of Prisons to find the best book to circulate amongst inmates.

    £250

  7. [JUVENILIA.] 

    Racconti per gli adolescenti.  Con tavole miniate. 

    Trieste, ‘Sezione Letterario-Artistica del Lloyd Austriaco’, 1857. 

    First and only edition, extremely rare, of these cautionary tales for adolescents, featuring inter alia debates among children on the ethics of taxidermy, a brawl in Latin lessons, arrests for embezzlement, and the unjust incarceration of a schoolboy. 

    £350

  8. [KAFKA, Franz, et al.]

    Das Jüdische Prag. Eine Sammelschrift.

    Prague, Verlag der “Selbstwehr”, 1917 [i.e. 1916].

    First edition, rare: an anthology produced by the Prague German-language Zionist weekly newspaper Der Selbstwehr, including the first authorised appearance in print of Kafka’s Ein Traum, one of only two excerpts from Der Prozess (The Trial) which were published during...

    £1000

  9. KAFKA, Franz, and Jean CARRIVE, translator.

    L’épée. Deux textes suivis d’un N.B. du traducteur.

    Paris, [Imprimerie des 2 Artisans], 1939.

    First separate edition in French of Das Schwert, and of an aphorism from Er: Aufzeichnungen aus dem Jahre 1920 (‘Er war früher Teil einer monumentalen Gruppe…’). The translations, by Jean Carrive, first appeared in Giration in July 1939, and are issued here as a tirage à part.

    £250

  10. [KAFKA, Franz, et al.]

    Vom jüngsten Tag. Ein Almanach neuer Dichtung.

    Leipzig, [W. Drugulin for] Kurt Wolff, 1916.

    First edition of the first collective publication of the younger generation of German writers Wolff had assembled under the rubric of Der jüngste Tag.

    £250

  11. KAMENSKII, Vasilii Vasilievich, and Nikolai Pavlovich DMITREVSKY (illustrator).

    Emel’ian Pugachev, poema. Graviury...

    [Leningrad], ‘Molodaia Gvardiia’, 1931.

    First edition of Kamensky’s long narrative poem, preceded by a play on the same subject in 1925.

    £1200

  12. KAPITSA, Olga, and Yuri VASNETSOV.

    Зайка [Little Hare] .

    Leningrad, Detizdat Ts K VLKSM, 1936.

    First edition of this collection of eleven traditional folk tales and songs about the hare and his encounters with huntsmen, foxes and other animals, charmingly written by Olga Kapitsa and illustrated by Yuri Vasnetsov, one of Russia’s leading artists of children’s books.

    £350

  13. KARAMZIN, Nikolai Mikhailovich.

    Aglaja. Romantische und historische Erzählungen. Nach dem Russischen des Karamzin herausgegeben...

    Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1819.

    First appearance of a collection of eight prose pieces by Karamzin (1766–1826) in German translation. Although the work takes the title of the first Russian literary almanac, Aglaia, published by Karamzin in two volumes, 1794–5, it is actually a selection of pieces by Karamzin taken both from Aglaia...

    £750

  14. KHARMS, Daniil Ivanovich, translator. BUSCH, Wilhelm.

    Plikh i Pliukh [Plisch und Plum].

    Moscow, Detizdat, 1937.

    First edition in book form, very rare, of Daniil Kharms’s Russian free verse translation of the children’s story by Wilhelm Busch about two mischievous dogs, second only in fame to his Max und Moritz. The translation had been first published in the children’s magazine Chizh in 1936 (nos. 8-12),...

    £3000

  15. KLIUEV, Nikolai Alekseevich.

    Izbianyia pesni [Izba Songs].

    Berlin, “Skify”, [1920].

    First edition. Nikolai Klyuev (1887–1937) was the leader of the so-called peasant poets, and Esenin’s erstwhile friend and mentor. This collection suitably takes its name from the izba, the traditional Russian peasant’s hut.

    £250

  16. KLIUEV, Nikolai Alekseevich.

    Chetvertyi Rim [The Fourth Rome].

    St Petersburg, “Epokha”, 1922.

    First edition of Klyuev’s attack on Esenin.

    £280

  17. KOLLÁR, Jan. 

    Díla básnická … we dwau djljch [‘A Collection of Poems … in two parts’]. 

    Buda, no publisher, but ‘with the types Gyuriána a Bagó’, 1845. 

    First collected edition of Jan Kollár’s works, inscribed to fellow poet and ‘brother Slav’ Ognjeslav Utješenowić-Ostrožinski, with an additional autograph sonnet written in his honour. 

    £1750

  18. KOROLENKO, Vladimir Galaktionovich.

    Dom No. 13-yi. Epizod iz Kishinevskago Pogroma [House No. 13. An episode from the Kishinev...

    Berlin, Johannes Räde, 1904.

    First edition printed in Berlin (first, London 1903) of Korolenko’s description of the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, in which he denounces anti-Semitism and religious persecution. The work was prohibited by the Russian censor and had to be published abroad.

    £200

  19. KOROLEVICH, Vladimir.

    Sady Dofina [The Gardens of the Dauphin].

    Moscow, [“Sinema”,] 1918.

    First (and only?) edition. The poems are divided into two sections: ‘The Gardens of the Dauphin’ and ‘Sacred Spring’.

    £150

  20. KRASNOV, Petr Nikolaevich.

    Lozh’. Roman [The Lie. A Novel].

    Paris, V. Siial’skii, [1939].

    First edition, written in Berlin in 1938-9.

    £600