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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. 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

  2. [GOETHE.] 

    REICHARDT, Johann Friedrich.  Goethe’s Lieder, Oden, Balladen und Romanzen mit Musik von J.F. Reichardt.  Erste...

    Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, [1809–11]. 

    Very rare first complete edition of Reichardt’s musical settings of Goethe’s poetry, comprising 128 settings of which thirty-nine appear here for the first time. 

    £6500

  3. SA‘DI, Abu ‘Abd Allah Musharrif al-Din (Adam OLEARIUS, translator). 

    Persianischer Rosenthal.  In welchen viel lustige...

    Schleswig, Johann Holwein for Johann Nauman in Hamburg, 1654. 

    Rare first illustrated edition, and the first edition translated by Olearius, of Sa‘di’s Gulistān or ‘Rose-garden’, with splendid engravings. 

    £6500

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von.

    Stella. Ein Schauspiel für Liebende in fünf Akten.

    Berlin, August Mylius, 1776.

    First edition, scarce, of Goethe’s early play about a man caught between his love for two women, which ends with reconciliation and a mariage à trois.

    £1800

  8. [GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von.] ECKERMANN, Johann Peter, and Dmitry Vasilievich AVERKIEV (translator).

    Razgovory Gete...

    St Petersburg, A.S. Suvorin, 1891.

    Rare first edition in Russian of Eckermann’s famous Gespräche mit Goethe (1836/48); a second edition followed in 1905.

    £1500

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. GOETHE, Johan Wolfgang von; Boris Leonidovich PASTERNAK, translator. 

    Тайны [Tainy; ‘Die Geheimnisse’ or ‘The...

    Moscow, Izdatel’stvo Sovremennik, 1922. 

    First and only edition, very rare, of Pasternak’s early translation of Goethe’s epic fragment Die Geheimnisse (The Mysteries); with a long introductory note by Professor Grigorii Rachinskii.

    £1200

  12. HESSE, Hermann.

    Siddhartha. Eine indische Dichtung.

    Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag, 1922.

    First edition of Hesse’s most celebrated work, the beautiful story of a young Brahmin’s search for the meaning of life on earth at the time of the Gautama Buddha. It is considered by many to be Hesse’s masterpiece, and its English translation in the 1950s became a spiritual guide to the generation...

    £1200

  13. 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

  14. [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

  15. 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

  16. 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

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. MUSIL, Robert.

    Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männer. Posse in drei Akten.

    Berlin, Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1924.

    Rare first edition of Musil’s (1880–1942) early farce, featuring an abduction, extramarital affairs, and a staged murder.

    £500

  20. 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