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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. DUMAS, Alexandre, père.

    Maître Adam le Calabrais.

    Paris, Dumont, 1840.

    Rare first authorised edition of an early comic novel by Dumas, written in 1839, before he achieved fame as a novelist. This edition was preceded by an unauthorised printing in Brussels the previous year.

    £500

  2. [ENIGMAS.]

    ‘Recueils d’Enigmes’.

    [France, mid-eighteenth century.]

    Four manuscript volumes collecting over seven hundred enigmas and riddles from the Mercure de France, the most popular literary magazine of eighteenth-century Paris.

    £750

  3. [EROTICA.]

    La belle sans chemise.

    ‘A Londres’, 1797.

    Very rare edition, with a false London imprint and an engraved frontispiece, of an erotic novel encompassing threesomes, dildos, cross-dressing, theft, extortion, betrayal, and revenge.

    £750

  4. EXPILLY, Claude.

    Les poemes de Messire Claude Expilly, Conseiller du Roy an son Conseil d’Etat & Prezidant au Parlemant de Grenoble.

    Grenoble, Pierre Verdier, 1624.

    A wide-margined copy of the expanded second edition of Expilly’s poetry, composed in a phonetic writing system of his own devising.

    £950

  5. GAGUIN, Robert.

    La mer des croniques et mirouer hystorial de France jadis compose en latin … et nouvellement traduict de latin...

    Paris, [Bernard Aubry for] Jacques Nyverd, to be sold by Galiot du Pré, [(colophon:) 23 August 1530].

    Very rare Paris vernacular edition (first 1518) of an illustrated history of the French monarchy, a seminal work of French historiography, devised as a scholarly account of France in the style of the classical historians.

    £8500

  6. GARCÍA LORCA, Federico.

    Chant funèbre pour Ignacio Sanchez Mejias & Ode à Walt Whitman. Traduits par Rolland-Simon.

    [Paris], GLM, 1938.

    Rare first edition in French of Lorca’s Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías: copy no. 2 of 20 printed on hollande pannekoek (first paper) of a total edition of 470.

    £500

  7. GARCIA LORCA, Federico.

    Cinq romances gitanes, texte espagnol et traduction par Guy Lévis-Mano.

    [Paris], GLM, [1939].

    First edition, one of 475 numbered copies, of translations into French by Guy Lévis-Mano of five poems from the Romancero gitano: ‘Saint Gabriel’, ‘La casada infiel’, ‘Romance sonámbulo’, ‘Romance de la Guardia Civil española’ and ‘Romance de la luna, luna’.

    £100

  8. GIONO, Jean.

    Colline.

    Paris, Bernard Grasset, Les Cahiers Verts, 1929.

    First edition of Giono’s first book, one of 170 numbered copies on vélin pur fil; it forms the first part of his successful ‘Pan trilogy’ with Un de Baumugnes (1929) and Regain (1930).

    £450

  9. GOGOL’, Nikolai Vasil’evich, and Louis VIARDOT (translator).

    Tarass Boulba… traduit du russe par Louis Viardot.

    Paris, Librairie de L. Hachette et Cie, 1853.

    First separate appearance of Gogol’s story in the French translation by Louis Viardot, with an introduction by Turgenev, published in the series ‘Bibliothèque des chemins de fer’.

    £250

  10. GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich (translator). GAUTIER, Théophile.

    Emali i kamei [Émaux et camées].

    [St Petersburg, M. V. Popov, 1914.]

    First edition, very rare, of Gumilev’s first published volume of translation, and Gautier’s first appearance in Russian. This is the only contemporary edition; it first received a reprint (in a bilingual edition) some seventy-five years later.

    £850

  11. [HÉRISSANT, Louis Théodore.]

    Le fablier françois, ou élite des meilleures fables depuis La Fontaine.

    Paris, Lottin le jeune, 1771.

    First edition, rare, of what has a claim to be the first comprehensive collection of French fables from the period after La Fontaine, assembled by the diplomat, lawyer, and historian Louis-Théodore Hérissant (1743–1811).

    £650

  12. HUGO, Victor.

    Notre-Dame de Paris. Par Victor Hugo. Troisième edition … Tome premier [– deuxième].

    Paris, Charles Gosselin, 1831.

    First edition, third issue, of Victor Hugo’s great historical novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of 275 copies printed.

    £7500

  13. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Le Livre des Questions.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1963].

    First edition. This is the first of what was to become a series of seven books under this title published between 1963 and 1973: ‘the centrepiece of Jabès’s oeuvre’ (Stoddard). 20 numbered copies were printed on pur fil; ours is one of the unnumbered copies on ordinary paper.

    £300

  14. JABÈS, Edmond.

    El, Ou le dernier livre.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1973].

    First edition, one of 40 numbered copies on vélin pur fil.

    £300

  15. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Le Livre des ressemblances.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1976].

    First edition, one of 20 numbered copies on vélin d’Arches Arjomari Prioux.

    £300

  16. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Trois filles de mon quartier.

    [Paris], G. L. M., [1948].

    First edition: one of 340 numbered copies, of which this is one of 15 on vélin du Marais.

    £550

  17. JABÈS, Edmond.

    La clef de voûte.

    [Paris], G.L.M., [1950].

    First edition: one of 400 numbered copies, of which this is one of 20 on vélin du Marais.

    £550

  18. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Yaël.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1967].

    First edition, one of 30 numbered copies on vélin pur fil.

    £500

  19. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Aely.

    [Paris], Gallimard, [1972].

    First edition, one of the issue of ordinary paper.

    £100

  20. JABÈS, Edmond.

    Trois filles de mon quartier.

    [Paris], G.L.M., [1948].

    First edition of thse poems by the Egyptian–Jewish poet Edmond Jabès, no. 75 of 340 numbered copies (of which this is one of 300 on Alfama), presented by the author to the writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues (1909–1991) and his wife, the Surrealist artist Bona de Mandiargues (1926–2000), prominent...

    £350