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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. [PORCELAIN.] KUKHNOV, A.F.

    Recueil de marques de fabriques de porcelaine Russes.

    [Paris, Imprimerie de Vaugirard, 1927.]

    Rare first and only edition of Kukhnov’s descriptive catalogue of eminent Russian porcelain factories, comprising brief histories of the factories accompanied by reproductions of their various factory marks.

    £600

  2. [POUND.]

    FROBENIUS, Leo. Il Liuto di Gassire. Legenda Africana con una nota di Ezra Pound.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1961].

    First edition, translated into Italian from the German by Siegfried Walter di Rachewiltz, Pound’s grandson (b. 1947), and with a ten-page note by Pound. A presentation copy, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey Bridson with the compliments of Siegfried W. de Rachewiltz / Brunnenburg 30. 5. 61’.

    £100

  3. POUND, Ezra, and Ernest FENELLOSA.

    Introduzione ai Nô, con un drama in un atto di Motokiyo: Kagekiyo.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1958].

    Third edition, translations of Pound’s ‘Introduction’ and one play from Certain Noble Plays of Japan by his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. This third edition added ‘Un intervallo di 40 anni’ by Pound, dated November 1958.

    £30

  4. POUND, Ezra, and Giovanni GIUDICI, translator.

    H.S. Mauberley, tradotto di Giovanni Giudici con tre disegni inedita...

    Milan, all’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1959.

    First edition, no. 141 of 1000 copies, a parallel-text Italian translation of Pound’s modernist masterpiece Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920).

    £100

  5. [PREDIERI, Luca Antonio, composer; Apostolo ZENO, librettist.]

    La tirannide vendicata, drama per musica, da rappresentarsi...

    Pesaro, Gavelli, 1726.

    First edition, very rare, of the libretto of an opera performed at Pesaro in 1726, bound in red damask most likely for presentation to the dedicatee, Teresa Borromeo Albani.

    £1250

  6. PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich. Manuel ALTOLAGUIRRE and Ovady SAVICH, translators.

    Teatro (El Convidado de piedra....

    Barcelona, Editado por la Asociación de Relaciones con la U.R.S.S. en el primer centenario del poeta, 1938.

    First edition of Altolaguirre’s translation of two of Pushkin’s Little Tragedies, ‘The Stone Guest’ and ‘A Feast During the Plague’ produced for the Russian poet’s centenary; apparently printed on Altolaguirre’s own press.

    £300

  7. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.] BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich (editor).

    Pis’ma Pushkina i k Pushkinu. Novye materialy,...

    Moscow, Press of the Society for the Distribution of Useful Books, 1903.

    First edition of this collection of Pushkin’s correspondence, edited by the Symbolist poet and critic Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873–1924); most of the contents are published from the original manuscripts.

    £900

  8. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.] BRIUSOV, Valerii Iakovlevich (editor).

    Litseiskie stikhi Pushkina, po rukopisiam Moskovskago...

    Moscow, “Skorpion”, 1907.

    First edition – the symbolist poet Valery Briusov’s critical notes to volume I of the Academy edition of Pushkin’s Works (1899), which had included his Lycée poems 1812-17.

    £350

  9. 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

  10. PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.

    Sochineniia A. S. Pushkina. Tom pervyi [- shestoi + Prilozheniia]… Izdanie Ia. A. Isakova [The...

    St Petersburg, Eduard Prats, 1859-60.

    Third collected edition of the works of Pushkin, complete with the supplement volume compiled by Grigorii Gennadi; this is the first edition to be edited by Isakov. Very rare.

    £8000

  11. PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.

    Bumagi … Vypusk pervyi [all published] [Papers … First Part].

    Moscow, University Press (M. Katkov), 1881.

    First edition of Pushkin’s collected papers, edited by P.I. Bartenev, the first (and at that time only) person allowed access to them.

    £1200

  12. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.]

    Al’bom Pushkinskoi Iubileinoi Vystavki v Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk v S. Peterburg, Mai 1899...

    Moscow, K.A. Fisher, 1899.

    The catalogue of an exhibition to celebrate the centenary of Pushkin’s birth, held at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg.

    £800

  13. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.]

    Iubileinyi Al’bom v pamiat’ stoletiia so dnia rozhdeniia poeta 1799–1899 [A Jubilee Album...

    St Petersburg, A.F. Marx, 1899.

    First edition of an album in celebration of Pushkin, published as a supplement in the literary magazine Niva.

    £1500

  14. PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.

    Můj rodokmen [My genealogy].

    [Prague, Průmyslová tiskárna, 1937.]

    First edition, privately printed, of this Czech translation of Pushkin’s Moia rodoslovnaia (‘My genealogy’, 1830), the great Russian poet’s defence of his ancestry against some recent racial slurs. The fine illustrations are by Karel Svolinský (1896–1986), who is best known...

    £250

  15. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich (contributor).]

    Сѣверные цвѣты на 1825 годъ [Severnye tsvety na 1825...

    St Petersburg, Department of Public Education, 1825 [Moscow, Universitetskaia tip., 1881].

    Rare nineteenth-century Moscow reprint of the exceptionally rare first issue of Northern flowers, one of the most celebrated Russian literary anthologies, edited by Pushkin’s great friend Delvig. The 1825 issue included the first appearance of four passages from part ii of Eugene...

    £1750

  16. [PUSHKIN, Alexander.]

    LÉNSTRÖM, Carl Julius. Alexander Puschkin. Rysslands Byron. Ett Skaldeporträtt … första [-sednare]...

    Uppsala, Leffler och Sebell; 1841.

    First edition, very rare, of a study of Pushkin by the Swedish literary historian C. J. Lénström delivered at the Gustavian Auditorium on 8 December 1841.

    £350

  17. RADIUS, J.

    S. C. de. Characteristic Features of Russian and Slavic Poetry, with Specimens, translated by English Authors …

    London, printed by Seyfang & Co. [for the author], 1854.

    First and only edition. This little book contains what must be some of the earliest translations of Ukrainian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Slovene, Slovak, and Sorb verse into English. It certainly offers an early example of comparative Slavonic studies. Most of the specimens, however, are Russian, among...

    £325

  18. RADLOVA, Anna Dmitrievna.

    Korabli. Vtoraia kniga stikhov [Ships. A Second Book of Poems].

    St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1920.

    First edition of the second collection of poems published by Anna Radlova (1891–1949), a poet well-known for her translations of Shakespeare.

    £150

  19. RADLOVA, Anna Dmitrievna.

    Krylatyi gost’. Tret’ia kniga stikhov [The Winged Guest. A Third Book of Poems].

    [St Petersburg,] “Petropolis”, 1922.

    First edition: Radlova’s third collection of poems, written in 1920–22.

    £120

  20. RAFALOVICH, Sergei L’vovich.

    Avgust. Stikhotvoreniia [August. Poems].

    Berlin, L.D. Frenkel, 1924.

    First edition: a rare collection from the prolific if little-known poet and theatre critic, including a piece on the death of Blok.

    £100