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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. SA‘DI, Abu ‘Abd Allah Musharrif al-Din (Adam OLEARIUS, translator). 

    Persianischer Rosenthal.  In welchen viel lustige...

    Schleswig, Johann Holwein for Johann Nauman in Hamburg, 1654. 

    Rare first illustrated edition, and the first edition translated by Olearius, of Sa‘di’s Gulistān or ‘Rose-garden’, with splendid engravings. 

    £6500

  2. SALINAS, Pedro.

    El Contemplado. Tema con variaciones.

    Mexico, Nueva Fioresta en la Editorial Stylo, 1946.

    First edition: a set of fifteen poems written in Puerto Rico between 1943 and 1945, in which the poet addresses the sea he is watching.

    £350

  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. SCARRON, Paul. 

    Le Marquis ridicule, ou la comtesse faite à la haste.  Comedie … Suivant la copie imprimée a Paris. 

    [Leiden, Elzevier], 1656. 

    First Elzevier editions, very rare, of these two plays by Scarron, pirated after the text of the first editions printed in Paris.  A finely bound volume with excellent Elzevierian provenance. 

    £800

  5. 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

  6. SCHUBERT, Franz, composer. 

    A fine contemporary volume of ten works containing eighteen Lieder including his most famous...

    Vienna, 1821-1833. 

    A rare collection of Schubert Lieder in a contemporary binding, apparently as retailed by the Czech music publisher Berra, including three first editions. 

    £7500

  7. 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

  8. 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

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. SHAKESPEARE, William, and Bolemir IZBORSKÝ, pseud. [i.e. Antonín MAREK], translator.

    Omylowé dle Shakespeara...

    Prague, Jozefa Fetterlowá, ‘in the Archbishop’s Printing House at the Seminary’, 1823.

    First edition in Czech, very rare, of A Comedy of Errors, freely translated by Antonín Marek (1785–1877), one of the earliest appearances of Shakespeare in the language, preceded only by a very rare translation of Macbeth by Karel Ignác Thám (Makbet, 1786), which was staged...

    £1100

  13. 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

  14. SHAKESPEARE, William, and Mihály VÖRÖSMARTY, translator. 

    Lear Király … 

    Pest, Landerer & Heckenastn, 1856. 

    First edition of the first translation of King Lear into Hungarian by Mihály Vörösmarty, commissioned by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and carried out as part of a joint effort between three of Hungary’s most renowned poets. 

    £950

  15. 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

  16. [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

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. 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

  20. 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