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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. 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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. KRASNOV, Petr Nikolaevich.

    Lozh’. Roman [The Lie. A Novel].

    Paris, V. Siial’skii, [1939].

    First edition, written in Berlin in 1938-9.

    £600

  5. KRASNOV, Petr Nikolaevich.

    Mantyk, okhotnik na l’vov. Povest’ [Mantyk, lion-hunter. A story].

    Paris, V. Siial’skii, 1928.

    First edition, an African safari adventure for younger readers, by the exiled ataman of the Don Cossacks.

    £1200

  6. KRASNOV, Petr Nikolaevich.

    Mantyk, okhotnik na l’vov. Povest’ [Mantyk, lion-hunter. A story].

    Paris, V. Siial’skii, 1928.

    First edition, an African safari adventure for younger readers, by the exiled ataman of the Don Cossacks.

    £1200

  7. KRASNOV, Petr Nikolaevich.

    S Ermakom na Sibir! Povest’ [With Ermak to Siberia! A story].

    Paris, V. Siial’skii, [1929].

    First edition, an illustrated children’s story about the sixteenth-century Cossack leader Ermak Timofeevich, whose exploration of Siberia in the 1580s marked the beginning of Russia’s expansion into the interior.

    £1000

  8. KRASNOV, Petr Nikolaevich.

    Nenavist’. Roman [Hatred. A Novel].

    Paris, E. Siial’skaia, [1934].

    First edition, one of 1000 copies on normal paper from an edition of 1007. It was also translated into German and Italian.

    £600

  9. KRASNOV, Petr Nikolaevich.

    Domoi! (na l’gote). Roman [Homewards! (On leave). A novel].

    Paris, V. Siial’skii, [1936].

    First edition, one of 1000 copies on normal paper from an edition of 1002; a novel of soldiers on leave.

    £600

  10. KRUCHENYKH, Aleksei Eliseevich.

    Zaumnyi iazyk u: Seifullinoi, Vs. Ivanova, Leonova, Babelia, I. Sel’vinskogo, A. Veselogo, i...

    Moscow, Publishing house of the All-Russian Union of Poets, 1925.

    First edition, a critical study of six poets by ‘the most effective theoretician of cubo-futurism and its most loyal and consistent advocate of transrational language … or the destruction of meaning in poetry … For Kruchonykh, transrational language also reflected the confusion and chaos...

    £650

  11. KUNDERA, Milan.

    Smĕšné lásky. Tři melancholické anekdoty.

    Prague, Československý spisovatel, 1963.

    First edition of all three volumes of the trilogy which makes up Kundera’s early collection of short stories, Laughable Loves. ‘My writing took flight with the first story for Laughable Loves. This was my Opus 1. Everything I'd written prior to it can be considered prehistory’...

    £500

  12. KUNDERA, Milan.

    Žert [The Joke].

    Prague, Československý spisovatel, 1967.

    First edition of Kundera’s first novel, The Joke, which gives a satirical account of the political atmosphere in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s.

    £400

  13. KUSIKOV, Aleksandr Borisovich, pseud. [Boris KUSIKIAN].

    Koevangelieran [Ko-gospel-ran].

    Moscow, “Imazhinisty”, 1920.

    First edition. It is difficult to piece together a cohesive picture of Aleksandr Kusikov. His romanticized self-image was one of a wild mountain-dweller, and the Circassian trappings with which he surrounded himself (he was born in 1896 in Armavir to a large Armenian family called Kusikian) were clearly...

    £100

  14. KUSIKOV, Aleksandr Borisovich, pseud. [Boris KUSIKIAN].

    Al’-barrak. Poemy.

    Berlin, “Skify”, 1922.

    First edition, containing five poems on Islamic themes: ‘Al-Barrak’, ‘Al-Kadr’, ‘Julfikar’, ‘Iskandar Namah’ (1921), and ‘Ko-gospel-ran’.

    £150

  15. KUZMIN, Mikhail Alekseevich.

    Komedii [Comedies].

    St Petersburg, “Ory”, 1908.

    First edition of one of Kuzmin’s earliest publications, a collection of three comedies on historical, pseudo-religious themes: ‘O Evdokii iz Geliopolia’ (On Eudoxia of Heliopolis), ‘O Aleksee cheloveke Bozh’em’ (On Alexis the man of God), and ‘O Martiniane’ (On...

    £900

  16. KUZMIN, Mikhail Alekseevich.

    Aleksandriiskiia pesni [Alexandrian songs].

    St Petersburg, “Prometei”, [1921].

    First separate edition of Kuzmin’s Alexandrian Songs, originally published as part of his first collection, Nets, in 1908.

    £400

  17. KUZMIN, Mikhail Alekseevich.

    Lesok. Liricheskaia poema dlia muzyki s ob”iasnitel’noi prozoi v trekh chastiakh [The Grove....

    [Petrograd, “Neopalimaia kupina”, 1922].

    First edition, copy no. 1 of a numbered edition of 500 copies.

    £750

  18. LABORDE, Ernest.

    Vieilles maisons boutiques & paysages de Paris. Eaux fortes originales de Ernest Laborde. Presentées par Gustave...

    Paris, Jules Meynial, 1918 [1919].

    First edition, very rare: two series of twenty etchings each on the most picturesque houses and shops in Paris, produced between 1911 and 1918 by Ernest Laborde (1870–1935).

    £1950

  19. LAGERLÖF, Selma.

    Bannlyst. En berättelse.

    Stockholm, Albert Bonniers Förlag, [1918].

    First edition: Lagerlöf’s pacifist novel, The Outcast, published towards the end of 1918, in which she argues for a re-examination of the state of modern Western society.

    £100

  20. LANGE, Norah.

    45 Días y 30 marineros. Novela.

    Buenos Aires, Editorial Tor (Colección Cometa), 1933.

    First edition: Norah Lange’s second novel, which follows a 20-year old girl, Ingrid, the only woman on the ship, on a voyage from Buenos Aires to Oslo.

    £100