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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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
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ROUVEYRE, André.
Two typescript drafts of Apollinaire (1952), here titled ‘Stature d’Apollinaire. Gravures de Henri Matisse’,
c. 1950.
ROUVEYRE, André, and Henri MATISSE. Apollinaire. Paris, Raisons d’Etre, 1952 [1953].
£6500
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PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich. DUPONT, H. (translator).
Oeuvres choisies... traduites pour la première fois en français... Tome...
St Petersburg, chez Fd. Bellizard et Cie; Paris, Au comptoir des Imprimeurs-unis, 1847.
First collected edition of Pushkin in French, preceded in French translation only by some individual poems and stories, and a translation of The Queen of Spades in 1843. This is one of the earliest major collections of Pushkin to appear outside Russia.
£2500
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DAUDET, Alphonse.
Lettres de mon Moulin. Impressions et souvenirs.
Paris, J. Hetzel et Ce, [1869].
First edition, rare, of Daudet’s Lettres de mon Moulin. These sketches of Provençal life appeared first in Le Figaro between August 1866 and October 1869, before being published in book form in 1869 and in countless editions from that time on.
£2500
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ZOLA, Émile.
La Curée.
Paris, A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie, 1871.
First edition of the second novel in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, La Curée. The first six volumes of the series were printed on ordinary paper only (no grand papier issue) and are all very rare.
£2500
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MAINE DE BIRAN. [MARIE FRANÇOIS PIERRE GONTHIER DE BIRAN.]
Influence de l’Habitude sur la Faculté de Penser.
Paris, Henrichs, 1803.
First edition of Maine de Biran’s first major work, in which he draws a distinction between what he calls passive habits, i.e. sensations and impressions which become dulled with repetition, and active habits, i.e. those which are conscious, and willed. “The effect of this, which was borne out by...
£2000
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BECQUE, Henry.
Les Corbeaux, pièce en quatre actes.
Paris, Tresse, [1882].
First and second editions of Becque’s innovative realist drama, inscribed by the author on the first half-title to ‘mon cher [Jules-Charles] Truffier’, with authorial marks and annotations on thirty-three pages in the second edition showing changes made for performance.
£2000
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APULEIUS, Lucius.
L. Apuleii Metamorphoseos, sive lusus Asini libri XI. Floridoru[m] IIII. De deo Socratis I. De philosophia...
Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri’, May 1521.
First Aldine edition of the works of the second-century AD Numidian novelist Apuleius, with the editio princeps of Alcinous’s second-century handbook on Plato’s philosophy in the original Greek, from the library of the great French writer Victor Hugo.
£2000
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AZAÏS, Gabriel, and Charles LABOR.
Illustrated manuscript volume of poetry, comprising ‘Vingt-six janvier 1836’ by Azaïs,...
Béziers, c. 1836?
An attractive presentation volume, with poems by Azaïs (1805-1888) and Labor (1813-1900), and fine vignette sketches. Azaïs, later author of Les Troubadours de Béziers (1869) was a member of the Félibrige, the literary organization founded by Frédéric Mistral to promote Occitan language...
£1750
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MUSSET, Alfred de, and Nikolai Porfir’evich GREKOV, translator.
Rolla, poema … perevod N.P. Grekova [Rolla,...
Moscow, F.B. Miller, 1864.
First edition in Russian of Musset’s Rolla (1833), a poetic reinterpretation of the Don Juan myth, translated by the poet Nikolai Porfir’evich Grekov (1810–1866).
£1750
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UGARTE, Manuel, and Georges FOUCART, translator.
‘Contes de la Pampa’: a manuscript translation of Ugarte’s...
Paris, c. 1923-5.
A fine, largely unpublished manuscript, with translations of all fourteen stories from Miguel Ugarte’s Cuentos de la Pampa (1903, here translated from the 1920 edition).
£1750
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[LOQUET, Marie-Françoise].
Voyage de Sophie et d’Eulalie, au Palais du vrai bonheur; ouvrage pour servir de guide dans les voies...
Paris, Charles-Pierre Berton, 1781.
First edition of this rare utopian voyage written by a woman for a readership of women.
£1500
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RILKE, Rainer Maria.
Les Fenêtres. Dix poèmes de Rainer Maria Rilke illustrés de dix eaux-fortes par Baladine.
Paris, Officina Sanctandreana, 1927.
First edition, numbered 146 of 500 copies on pur fil, of a total edition of 515. A series of ten poems in French addressed by Rilke to his lover ‘Mouky’ or ‘Baladine’ Klossowska, who herself provided the illustrations. Elisabeth Dorothea Klossowska née Spiro (1886–1969)...
£1200
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PARADIN, Guillaume.
Gulielmi Paradini Anchemani Epigrammata ...
Lyons, Ant. Gryphius, 1581.
First and only edition of this French historian’s poetry including verses about or addressed to Ronsard, Pontus de Tyard, Claude Rouillet, and the Lyons printers Sébastien and Antoine Gryphe, and Jean de Tournes.
£950
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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
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NERVAL, Gérard de.
Lorely, souvenirs d’Allemagne.
Paris, D. Giraud et J. Dagneau, 1852.
First edition, second issue, of a collection of Nerval’s writings on Germany. German Romanticism had a great influence on Nerval, and he was drawn to the country, visiting it seven times. At the age of 20, he published a translation of Faust which Goethe himself praised. Lorely opens with a long preface...
£800
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[KRÜDENER, Barbara Juliane de Vietinghoff, Baronne de.]
Valérie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G… Tome...
Paris, Henrichs, 1804.
Rare first edition of Valérie, the most famous novel by the Russian mystic and novelist Madame de Krüdener (1766–1824), who for a time exerted an influence over Tsar Alexander I.
£800
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MESHCHERSKII, Elim Petrovich.
Les boréales par B. de G. et le prince Elim Mestscherski …
Paris, Bellizard, Dufour et Cie, 1839.
First edition of a rare French anthology of Russian poets, including early translations of six poems by Pushkin.
£800
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SCARRON, Paul.
Le Marquis ridicule, ou la comtesse faite à la haste. Comedie … Suivant la copie imprimée a Paris.
[Leiden, Elzevier], 1656.
First Elzevier editions, very rare, of these two plays by Scarron, pirated after the text of the first editions printed in Paris. A finely bound volume with excellent Elzevierian provenance.
£800
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[BAUDELAIRE, Charles.]
Hommage à C. F. Denecourt. Fontainebleau. Paysages – Légendes – Souvenirs – Fantaisies.
Paris, Librairie de L. Hachette & Co., 1855.
First edition of this anthology compiled by Fernand Desnoyers and Auguste Luchet, published in honour of the self-appointed keeper of the forest of Fontainebleau, Claude-François Denecourt. It includes texts by Asselineau, Banville, Baudelaire, Béranger, Brizeux, Champfleury, Dupont, Gautier, Hugo,...
£750