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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BUQUOY, Georg Franz August de Longueval, Freiherr von Vaux, Graf von.
Anregungen für philosophisch-wissenschaftliche Forschung...
Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1825.
First edition, rare, of a comprehensive discussion by the author of his personal philosophy, with c. 50 pages of his poetry thrown in at the end for good measure. Samuel Hahnemann refers to the work in Die chronischen Krankheiten (1828–30), calling Buquoy a ‘deep-thinking, many-sided scholar and...
£950
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RUFIANDER, Fabius Jocosus, pseud. [Friedrich Julius ROTTMANN].
Curiöse Inaugural Disputation von dem Recht / Natur /...
‘Teutschland, Gedruckt in denen Hundes-Tagen, 1716.’
First edition, very rare, of this satirical academic disputation on melancholy, dedicated to the author’s ‘unpleasant and universally despised’ peers in the hope of cheering them up (p. [4] trans.).
£675
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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
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HESSE, Hermann.
Das Glasperlenspiel.
Zurich, Fretz und Wasmuth Verlag, 1943.
First edition of Hesse's last, quintessential work. It occupied him for eleven years, and was published in 1943, the year in which Hesse's name was placed on the black-list of authors in Germany.
£750
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[VOLTAIRE.]
Das Mädchen von Orleans. Ein komisches Heldengedicht in zwölf Gesängen nach Voltaire frei bearbeitet.
Neustadt, ‘im Verlags-Comptoir’, n. d. [mid nineteenth century].
A good copy of this very rare German rendition of Voltaire’s La Pucelle d’Orleans. Fromm gives the date as around 1865 (and the place of publication as Hamburg), the online Staatsbibliothek catalogue (the only copy listed by KVK) as c.1830. The translator remains anonymous.
£100
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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 – Hofmannsthal himself considered it to be his finest libretto. The opera was first performed on 6 June 1928 in Dresden, five weeks before Hofmannsthal’s death. The plot is a free adaptation of Euripides’ Helena, which introduces...
£750
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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
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OMAR KHAYYAM, and Friedrich BODENSTEDT, translator.
Die Lieder und Sprüche des Omar Chajjâm …
[Leipzig, Fischer & Wittig for] Breslau, Schletter, 1881.
Apparent first edition of Bodenstedt’s translation of the poetry of the Persian polymath Omar Khayyam (1048–1131).
£175
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SCHUBERT, Franz, composer.
A fine contemporary volume of ten works containing eighteen Lieder including his most famous...
Vienna, 1821-1833.
A rare collection of Schubert Lieder in a contemporary binding, apparently as retailed by the Czech music publisher Berra, including three first editions.
£7500
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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
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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
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[LA ROCHE, Sophie von.]
Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim. Von einer Freundin derselben aus Original-Papieren und andern...
Leipzig, bey Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1771.
First edition of Sophie von La Roche’s first novel, a best seller which brought her fame and recognition throughout Germany, and was translated into French, English, Russian and Dutch. It became a pattern for the genre of the epistolary novel in Germany, and has even been cited as a forerunner...
£950
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SHAGINYAN, Marietta Sergeevna.
Gëte [Goethe].
Moscow and Leningrad, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1950.
First edition of Marietta Sergeevna Shaginyan’s (1888–1982) scholarly work on Goethe, which particularly examines Russian (and Soviet) appreciations. The great German writer was Shaginyan’s (or Shaginian’s) idol, as attested by Puteshestvie v Veimar (Journey to Weimar).
£350
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GRASS, Günter.
Gleisdreieck.
Darmstadt, Luchterhand, 1960.
Rare first edition of this volume of poems with Grass’s own drawings.
£100
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[ST PETERSBURG SUBSCRIPTION LIBRARY.] HOLTEI, Karl Eduard von.
Lenore. Vaterländisches Schauspiel mit Gesang in drei Abtheilungen.
Berlin, Duncker and Humblot, 1829.
First edition of one of Holtei’s best-known plays, inspired by a ballad by Gottfried Bürger.
£280
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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
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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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NICOLAI, [Christoph] Friedrich.
The Life and Opinions of Sebaldus Nothanker. Translated from the German … by Thomas Dutton,...
London: Printed by C. Lowndes, and sold by H.D. Symonds, 1798.
First edition in English, very scarce, of Nicolai’s Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker (1773–6), ‘probably the literary bestseller of the German Enlightenment’ (Selwyn), translated into many languages and much re-printed. It is sometimes considered...
£2750
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LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim, and Viktor KRYLOV (translator).
Natan mudryi. Dramaticheskoe stikhotvorenie … perevod...
St Petersburg, Stasiulevich, 1875.
First edition in Russian of Lessing’s Nathan der Weise, very rare.
£2000
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GRASS, Günter.
Onkel, Onkel. Ein Spiel in vier Akten. Mit neun Zeichnungen des Autors.
Berlin, Klaus Wagenbach, 1965.
First edition.
£75