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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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
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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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RÜCKERT, Friedrich.
Die Weisheit des Brahmanen, ein Lehrgedicht in Bruchstücken. Erstes [– Sechstes] Bändchen.
Leipzig, Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung, 1836-39.
First edition of one of the most important poetical works by Rückert, here in the publisher’s attractive original paper wrappers. Rückert’s large output of poetry inspired many composers, among them Schubert (‘Du bist die Ruh’), Schumann (‘Widmung’), and Mahler (‘Kindertotenlieder’...
£500
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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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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
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SCHILLER, Friedrich.
Wallenstein ein dramatisches Gedicht …
Tübingen, J. G. Cotta, 1800.
First edition of Schiller’s dramatic Wallenstein trilogy, tracing the rise and fall of the Bohemian general Albrecht von Wallenstein during the Thirty Years’ War, from the von Carlowitz library and perhaps associated with the play’s French translator, Baroness Aloïse-Christine de Carlowitz....
£800
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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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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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[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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[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