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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. ROZENGEIM, Mikhail Pavlovich.

    Stikhotvoreniia [Poems] …

    St Petersburg, Artillery Department Press, 1858.

    First edition of Rozengeim’s first book, very rare, a collection of seventy-six poems of patriotic martial mood.

    £2000

  2. [RUSSIAN POETRY.]

    Izbrannye stikhi russkikh poetov. Seriia sbornikov po temam. Rossiia [Selections of verse by Russian poets....

    [St Petersburg, Stasiulevich,] 1914.

    First edition of a patriotic anthology of poems on the theme of ‘Russia’, organised chronologically from Odoevsky to Kliuev, including contributions from Ehrenburg, Bal’mont, Blok, Lermontov, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Turgenev.

    £250

  3. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN, Mikhail Yevgrafovich.

    Blagonamerennyia rechi. Tom I [– II] [Well-meaning speeches. Volume I [–II]].

    St Petersburg, A.A. Kraevsky, 1876.

    First edition of these social and political satires by the greatest satirist of nineteenth-century Russia. The title is ambiguous – the word ‘well-meaning’ was widely used by the administration to mean ‘loyal’, i.e. ‘politically reliable’.

    £1800

  4. SCHNITZLER, Jean-Henri.

    Rostopchin i Kutuzov. Rossiia v 1812 godu. Perev. s predisloviem i primechaniiami A. El’nitskago [Rostopchin...

    St. Petersburg, “Luch”, 1912

    First edition in Russian of La Russie en 1812, Rostopchine et Koutousof (1863), a history of Russia during the Napoleonic wars. The generals Rostopchin and Kutuzov would appear as major characters in War and Peace (1865 7), and Schnitzler’s original appeared just as Tolstoy began work on his novel.

    £300

  5. SELVINSKII, Il’ia Lvovich.

    Rekordy [Records].

    Moscow, “Uzel”, 1926.

    First edition, of Ilya Selvinsky’s (1899–1968) first volume of verse, one of 700 copies.

    £300

  6. SELVINSKII, Ilia Lvovich.

    Ulialaevshchina: epopeia [The Ulialaev uprising: an epic].

    Moscow, Gosizdat “Khudozhestvennaia literatura”, 1935.

    Fourth edition (first, 1927) of Sel’vinskii’s first and most successful verse epic. Ulialaevshchina describes the fortunes of a kulak, Ulialaev, ‘who seized an estate from its pre-Revolutionary owner and was later defeated in an anarchist rebellion by the Red Army. Selvinsky’s depictions are...

    £100

  7. SHAGINYAN, Marietta Sergeevna.

    O blazhenstve imushchago: poeziia Z.N. Gippius [On the bliss of the propertied: the poetry of...

    Moscow, “Al’tsiona”, [1912].

    First edition, a critical essay by Shaginian published in the same year as Orientalia (advertised here), the collection of poetry that brought her fame.

    £350

  8. SHAGINYAN, Marietta Sergeevna.

    Puteshestvie v Veimar [Journey to Weimar].

    Moscow & Petrograd, Gosizdat, 1923.

    First edition of Shaginyan’s account of a pilgrimage to Weimar, presented by the author ‘to the respected Vladimir Pavlovich Pirogov in dear memory’ (trans.).

    £600

  9. 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

  10. SHAKESPEARE, William, and Boris Leonidovich PASTERNAK, translator.

    Otello, venetsianskii mavr. Perevod s angliiskogo...

    Moscow, Ogiz, 1945.

    First edition of Pasternak’s translation. ‘Pasternak was attached to Shakespeare for all his creative life. In his best early verse collection My Sister Life (pub. 1922), the poem “English Lessons” featured Desdemona and Ophelia “letting their passions slip from their shoulders...

    £1000

  11. SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe, and Konstantin Dmitrievich BALMONT, translator.

    Sochineniia Shelli... Vypusk 7-i, Chenchi,...

    Moscow, Mamontov, 1899.

    First edition of Balmont’s translation of Shelley’s The Cenci, volume 7 of his verse translation of the complete works of Shelley into Russian.

    £900

  12. [SHERSHENEVICH, Vadim Gabrielevich, translator and editor.] VILDRAC, Charles, and Georges DUHAMEL.

    Teoriia svobodnogo...

    Moscow, “Imazhinisty”, 1920.

    First edition of Shershenevich’s translation of Vildrac and Duhamel’s Notes sur la technique poétique (1910), ‘which served as the basis for Shershenevich’s theory of the “vers libre of images,” in his imagist book, 2 × 2 = 5 (1920)’ (Terras).

    £150

  13. SHERSHENEVICH, Vadim Gabrielevich.

    Bystr’. Monologicheskaia drama [Rapids. A monological drama].

    Moscow, “Pleiady”, 1916.

    First edition, one of 500 numbered copies, of this verse drama from the radical young writer Shershenevich (1893–1942).

    £350

  14. SHIRMAN, Grigorii Iakovlevich.

    Klinopis’ molnii [Cuneiform of Lightnings].

    Moscow, All-Russian Union of Poets, 1926.

    First edition. A friend of Esenin and Mariengof, Shirman (1888–1956) graduated from the medical faculty at Moscow University in 1912 and worked as a doctor in the city. He was arrested four times (1927, 1937, 1941, 1949), but was released each time without charge. His first book of verse, Mashina...

    £250

  15. SHKAPSKAIA, Maria Mikhailovna.

    Krov’-ruda [Blood-ore].

    St Petersburg & Berlin, Epokha, 1922.

    First edition of a collection of twenty-one poems by Maria Shkapskaya (1881–1952).

    £300

  16. SHKAPSKAIA, Mariia Mikhailovna.

    Chas vechernii. Stikhi (1913–1917) [The Evening hour. Poems (1913–1917)].

    Petrograd, “Mysl’”, 1922.

    First edition of Maria Shkapskaya’s second book of poems.

    £350

  17. SHKAPSKAIA, Mariia Mikhailovna.

    Iav’. Poema [Reality. A poem].

    Moscow & St Petersburg, “Krug”, 1923.

    First edition, written by the poet on a visit to Romny in Ukraine.

    £400

  18. SHKAPSKAIA, Mariia Mikhailovna.

    Mater Dolorosa.

    St. Petersburg, [Neopalimaia Kupina], 1921.

    First edition of Maria Shkapskaya’s first book of poems. ‘You have taken to a new and very wide road. No woman before you has spoken so truthfully and in so firm a voice of her significance as a woman’ (Gorky to Shkapskaya, January 1923).

    £450

  19. SIDOROV, Gurii Aleksandrovich.

    Vedro ognia [A bucket of fire].

    Moscow, [All-Russian Union of Poets, 1920].

    Sidorov published only a handful of verse collections (Stilts, Skiff, both 1920; A Cloven Sun, 1921; Stalks, 1922). According to one contemporary reviewer, he was a poetic ‘builder of a second Rome’.

    £150

  20. SKABICHEVSKII, Aleksandr Mikhailovich.

    Ocherki istorii russkoi tsenzury (1700-1863 g.) [Sketches on the history of Russian censorship...

    St Petersburg, F. Pavlenkov, 1892.

    First edition of the critic and journalist Aleksandr Skabichevsky’s (1838-1910) essays on the history of Russian censorship, which had great success among the progressive reading public. Its popularity caused the censorship authorities to ban it from public libraries.

    £500