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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TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.
Posmertnyia khudozhestvennyia proizvedeniia… pod redaktsii V Chertkova. Tom I [-III] [Posthumous...
[Moscow], A.L. Tolstoy, [1912].
A reprint, in slightly smaller format than the first edition of 1911, of Tolstoy’s posthumous works, which included the first appearance of many important pieces: ‘Hadji Murad, as well as The Memoirs of a Madman and The Devil, was published only in 1911, in the collected edition...
£800
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TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.
Zhivoi trup. Drama v 6 deistviiakh i 12 kartinakh [A Living Corpse. A drama in 6 acts and 12 scenes].
Moscow, A. Ia. Petrov, [1911].
One of the earliest printings of Tolstoy’s Living Corpse, one of a number of editions in 1911, the year it was first staged, posthumously, at the Moscow Arts Theatre, offered with a traditional gypsy folk song included in the performance of Act II of The Living Corpse, first edition...
£2750
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[TORGA, Miguel, pseud.] ROCHA, Adolpho Correia da.
Abismo. Poemas.
[Coimbra, “Atlantida”, 1932.]
First (and only) edition of one of the very rare early collections of poetry of Miguel Torga, published under his own name while he was still a medical student in Coimbra.
£3500
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[TRENTO, Giulio].
Gli spiriti. Paragoni poetici. Dialogo d’un giovine, ed un cinico dell’andare alla Guerra. Diario mensuale...
Treviso, G. Trento, [1788].
Only edition, mentioned only in one or two pieces of local antiquarian history but not recorded in any of the usual library catalogues. An ephemeral publication containing a short story, a literary divertissement linking passages from Parini’s Mattino with an unidentified poem on gambling and an ode...
£300
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TRETIAKOV, Sergei Mikhailovich.
Rychi, Kitai! Stikhi [Roar, China! Poems].
Moscow, “Ogonek”, 1926.
First edition, very rare. Tretyakov wrote these lyrics during an extended visit to China in 1924, during which he collected material for his subsequent work on contemporary China. The name of the title poem ('Rychi, Kitai!') was used again for Tretyakov’s famous avant-garde play of the same...
£350
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TUGAN-BARANOSKIĬ, M. I.
Sovremennyĭ sotsializm v svoem istoricheskom razvitii.
St. Petersburg, Buduschnost’, 1906.
First edition of Tugan-Baranoskiĭ’s work on socialism; it was translated into English as Modern Socialism in its Historical Development by M. I. Redmount and published in 1910. After dismissal from his position at the University of St. Petersburg in 1899 for ‘political unreliability’, Tugan-Baranoskiĭ...
£350
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TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, Mikhail Ivanovich.
Russkaia fabrika v proshlom’ i nastoiashchem’ [The Russian factory in the past and present].
St Petersburg, L. F. Pantelev, 1898.
First edition thus, originally issued as the author’s doctoral dissertation in 1894, a historic-economic analysis of Russian factories up to the 19th century. Beginning with a long introductory chapter on the 18th century, the work analyses factory development before and after the emancipation of the...
£850
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TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, Mikhail Ivanovich.
Teoreticheskiia osnovyi Marksizma.
St Petersburg, I. N. Skorokhodov, 1905.
First Russian edition of Theoretical Foundations of Marxism; a German edition, Theoretische Grundlagen der Marxismus, was published in the same year.
£750
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TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, Mikhail Ivanovich.
Величайшая въ мірѣ коммунистическая организація...
Moscow, Vserossiiskii Tsentral’nii Coiuz Potrebitel’nykh Obshchestv’, 1918.
Rare Russian language tract on ‘The Greatest Communist Society in the World (Doukhobor Society),’ which left Russia for Canada in 1898-9, aided by Leo Tolstoy.
£250
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TUGAN-BARANOVSKI, Mikhail Ivanovich.
Obshchestvennoe ekonomicheskie idealyi nashego vremeni
Saint Petersburg, Izdatelstvo ‘Vestniks Znaniya’ V.V. Bitner, 1913 .
First and only edition of Socio-Economic Ideals in Our Time, seemingly never translated into English.
£850
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TURGENEV, Ivan Sergeevich.
Nov’. Roman [Virgin Soil. A Novel].
Moscow, 1878.
First edition printed in Russia of Turgenev’s novel about the Populists of the 1870s. It was first published in the journal Vestnik Evropy in 1877, followed shortly afterwards by an edition published in Leipzig.
£1500
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TURGENEV, Ivan Sergeevich.
Stikhotvoreniia [Poems].
St Petersburg, [V Tipografii Glazunova], 1885.
First edition: a collected volume of Turgenev’s poems omitted from the Complete collected works of 1883.
£1200
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UGARTE, Manuel, and Georges FOUCART, translator.
‘Contes de la Pampa’: a manuscript translation of Ugarte’s...
Paris, [c. 1923–5].
A fine, largely unpublished manuscript, with translations of all fourteen stories from Miguel Ugarte’s Cuentos de la Pampa (1903, here translated from the 1920 edition).
£1750
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UNAMUNO, Miguel de.
Teresa. Rimas de un poeta desconocido.
Madrid, Renacimiento, [1924].
First edition: a collection of love poems, with a prologue by Rubén Darío.
£400
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VOLOSHIN, Maksimilian Aleksandrovich.
O Repine [On Repin] …
Moscow, “Ole-Lukoie”, 1913.
First edition thus: three pieces written earlier in the year and published in journals on the work of Ilya Repin (1844–1930), often regarded as Russia’s national artist. At the end is an extract from a lecture (1885) by Landtsert on the painting ‘Ivan the Terrible and his Son’. Voloshin (1877–1932)...
£450
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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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[VOLYNSKII A. pseud. [Akim Lvovich FLEKSER.]
Parfenon. Sbornik Pervyi [Parthenon. First collection (All published)].
St Petersburg “Parfenon” 1922.
The first and only issue of a literary journal edited by A. Volynsky (1863–1926).
£250
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WEST, Nathanael.
Miss Lonelyhearts … with an Introduction by Alan Ross.
London, The Grey Walls Press, [1949].
First UK edition, with a new introduction by Ross. First published in 1933, this ‘acerbic’ black comedy set in New York during the Depression, was adapted and produced for radio by Bridson, broadcast on 25 May 1960, with Sam Wanamaker in the lead role, a male journalist writing an advice column under...
£125
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ZAMIATIN, Evgenii Ivanovich.
Nechestivye rasskazy [Impious Tales].
[Moscow,] ‘Krug’ writers’ cooperative, 1927.
First edition of a collection of eight short stories by the increasingly dissident Zamyatin, including ‘Iks’ [‘X’] and ‘Rasskaz o samom glavnom’ (‘Tale of the most essential thing’), ‘the single most important work of Zamjatin’s transitional period’ (Shane).
£200
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ZOLA, Émile.
La Curée.
Paris, A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie, 1871.
First edition of the second novel in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, La Curée. The first six volumes of the series were printed on ordinary paper only (no grand papier issue) and are all very rare.
£2500