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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. GOETHE, Johan Wolfgang von; Boris Leonidovich PASTERNAK, translator. 

    Тайны [Tainy; ‘Die Geheimnisse’ or ‘The...

    Moscow, Izdatel’stvo Sovremennik, 1922. 

    First and only edition, very rare, of Pasternak’s early translation of Goethe’s epic fragment Die Geheimnisse (The Mysteries); with a long introductory note by Professor Grigorii Rachinskii.

    £1200

  2. 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

  3. GOLDONI, Carlo.

    Scelta di alcune commedie. Per uso de’ dilettanti della lingua italiana. Prima edizione italiana.

    Livorno, Assunto Barbani, 1816.

    First edition printed in Italy of a collection of ten comedies by Goldoni, selected for their lack of complicated syntax and lack of Venetian dialect and idioms, published in Livorno for the benefit of the English community.

    £175

  4. GOR’KII, Maksim, pseud. [Aleksei Maksimovich PESHKOV].

    [Cover title:] Byvshie liudi [Former people, translated...

    St Petersburg, “Znanie”, 1906.

    First edition in book form, very rare, of Gorky’s powerful, darkly comic fable.

    £1500

  5. GOR’KII, Maksim, pseud. [Aleksei Maksimovich PESHKOV].

    V stepi. – Druzhki [On the Steppes. – The friends].

    Moscow, “Rodnaia rech’”, 1916

    An ephemeral edition of two early short stories by Gorky.

    £200

  6. GOR’KII, Maksim, pseud. [Aleksei Maksimovich PESHKOV].

    V Amerike. Ocherki [In America. Sketches].

    Berlin, J. Ladyschnikow Verlag, [1918].

    Second edition (first 1906): Gorky’s impressions of America after his visit there in 1906 to collect funds for the Party.

    £300

  7. [GOR’KII, Maksim, pseud. [Aleksei Maksimovich PESHKOV], and Nikolai Stepanovich GUMILEV.]

    Ballady o Robin Gude...

    St Petersburg, “Vsemirnaia Literatura”, 1919.

    First edition, very rare, of a collection of translations of twelve popular songs featuring Robin Hood, published in the early Soviet series Vsemirnaia Literaura (‘Worldwide Literature’), edited by Gumilev and with a ten-page introduction by Gorky.

    £900

  8. GOR’KII, Maksim, pseud. [Aleksei Maksimovich PESHKOV].

    Delo Artamonovykh [The Artamonov business].

    Berlin, “Kniga”, 1925.

    First edition. ‘[Gorky’s] best novel, The Artamonov Business (1925), follows the Artamonovs through three generations, from the uneducated grandfather, a strong and enterprising, lusty patriarch who starts a small factory and builds it into a major industrial plant, to a grandson, an intellectual...

    £450

  9. GOR’KII, Maksim, pseud. [Aleksei Maksimovich PESHKOV].

    Starik. P’esa [The old man. A play].

    Berlin, J. Ladyschnikow, [1921].

    First edition, written 1915, but not premiered until New Year’s Day 1919.

    £250

  10. GOR’KII, Maksim, pseud. [Aleksei Maksimovich PESHKOV].

    Zhaloby [Complaints].

    N.p., Rabochee Knigoizdatel’stvo, 1916.

    An ephemeral publication of a short story by Gorky, first published in four parts in Berlin, 1910-1911.

    £200

  11. GOR’KII, Maxim, pseud. [Aleksei Maksimovich PESHKOV].

    Katalog izdatel’stva “Vsemirnaia Literatura” pri narodnom...

    St Petersburg, “Vsemirnaia Literatura”, 1919.

    A catalogue marking the launch of a series of popular editions of the classics of world literature by the publishing house ‘Vsemirnaia Literatura’ (‘World Literature’), established by Gorky in 1919.

    £650

  12. GORODETSKII, Sergei Mitrofanovich.

    Iva. Piataia kniga stikhov [Willow. A fifth book of verse].

    St Petersburg, ‘Shipovnik’, 1913.

    First edition. Well received by the critics, this, the fifth collection from the co-founder of the Poets’ Guild and Acmeist movement, includes poems about the life of religious wanderers, pilgrims and the world of monasteries, as well as several children’s stories. Of his friend and collaborator,...

    £200

  13. GOUNOD, Charles François.

    A volume of ten songs bound together, all signed and inscribed by Gounod to Arthur Cecil Blunt.

    London, 1870–3.

    Ten of Gounod’s London-published songs, specially bound for presentation, all signed and inscribed in pencil on the upper wrapper to the English actor Arthur Cecil: ‘To my friend Arthur C. Blunt. Ch, Gounod’.

    £2000

  14. [GOURAUD, Stéphane, known as:] GURO, Stepan Andreevich, chevalier de.

    Rech’ o deistvii prosveshcheniia na sostoianie...

    St Petersburg, Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1826.

    First edition of an early speech on the importance of higher education, delivered by the rector of the recently founded University of St Petersburg in his native French (and in a somewhat florid style, to judge from the Russian translation by Nikita Butyrsky, a fellow academic and translator of...

    £400

  15. GRASS, Günter.

    Gleisdreieck.

    Darmstadt, Luchterhand, 1960.

    Rare first edition of this volume of poems with Grass’s own drawings.

    £100

  16. GRASS, Günter.

    Onkel, Onkel. Ein Spiel in vier Akten. Mit neun Zeichnungen des Autors.

    Berlin, Klaus Wagenbach, 1965.

    First edition.

    £75

  17. GRASS, Günter.

    The Danzig Trilogy [The Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse and Dog Years].

    New York, Pantheon & Harcourt Brace & World, 1962-65.

    First US editions, all translated by Ralph Manheim, and first published in the original German in 1959, 1961 and 1963.

    £500

  18. GRASS, Günter.

    Selected Poems … With translations from the German by Michael Hamburger and Christopher Middleton.

    New York, Harcourt Brace & World Inc., 1966.

    First US edition, with the original German on facing pages, of poems originally appearing in Die Vorzüge der Windhühner (1956) and Gleisdreieck (1960).

    £50

  19. GRIGOROVICH, Dmitrii Vasil’evich.

    Povesti i razskazy … Chast’ pervaia [– shestaia] [Stories and tales. Part I [– VI]].

    Moscow, E. Barfknekht, 1858, & V. Grachev, 1859.

    First collected edition of Grigorovich’s fiction, including the important stories Derevnia (The Village, 1846), Anton Goremyka (1847), Rybaki (The Fishermen, 1853) and Shkola gostepriimstva (The School of Hospitality, 1855).

    £2000

  20. [GUARINI, Giovanni Battista.]

    Il Pastor Fido.

    ‘In Parigi, appresso Tomaso Iolly, 1706’.

    Scarce Parisian edition of Guarini’s immensely popular ‘pastoral tragi-comedy’, charmingly illustrated by Antonio Luciani.

    £175