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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AZAÏS, Gabriel, and Charles LABOR.
Illustrated manuscript volume of poetry, comprising ‘Vingt-six janvier 1836’ by...
Béziers, not before 1836.
A charming presentation volume, with French poems by the Occitan scholars Azaïs (1805–1888) and Labor (1813–1900), and fine vignette sketches.
£1750
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BALZAC, Honoré de, and Fedor Kuz’mich SOLOGBUB, pseud. [Fedor TETERNIKOV], translator.
Ozornye skazki [Contes...
Petersburg, “Poliarnaia Zvezda”, 1922.
First edition, very rare, of Sologub’s translation of two of Balzac’s satirical Contes drolatiques, ‘The fair Imperia’ and ‘The fair Imperia married’.
£500
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BECQUE, Henry.
Les Corbeaux, pièce en quatre actes.
Paris, Tresse, [1882].
First and second editions of Becque’s innovative realist drama, inscribed by the author on the first half-title to ‘mon cher [Jules-Charles] Truffier’, with authorial marks and annotations on thirty-three pages in the second edition showing changes made for performance.
£2000
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[BILLARDON DE SAUVIGNY, Edme-Louis.]
Voyage de Madame et de Madame Victoire.
Lunéville, Messuy, [1761].
Four rare works describing visits by the princesses Adélaïde and Victoire, daughters of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska, to Lunéville and Nancy, in northeastern France, in 1761 and 1762, to see their grandfather Stanisław I Leszczyński, former King of Poland and then Duke of Lorraine.
£975
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CAREL DE SAINTE-GARDE, Jacques.
Les Sarrazins chassez de France. Poëme heroïque. Premiere partie.
Paris, Claude Barbin, 1667.
First edition, very rare, of this poetic account of the expulsion of the Saracens from France by Childebrand I and Charles Martel, written by Jacques Carel de Sainte Garde, almoner and counsellor to Louis XIV.
£850
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[CHAMPIER, Symphorien.]
La vie & les gestes du preux chevalier Bayard. Contenant plusieurs victoires par luy faictes du Resgne...
Lyons, Olivier Arnoullet, [(colophon:) 8 April 1558].
A rare edition of Champier’s account of the preux chevalier Bayard’s life and achievements, from the renowned library of the duc de La Vallière.
£9500
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CHATEAUBRIAND, François-[René] de.
Atala; ou Les amours de deux sauvages dans le désert: suivie de René.
London, Colburn, 1809.
First London edition in the original French, rare, of Chateaubriand’s first two published novellas, set in North America and supposedly written during his travels there while staying with Native Americans.
£350
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[COLETTE.] ‘WILLY’, pseud. [Henri GAUTHIER-VILLARS].
En Bombe. Roman modern. Illustrations photographiques.
Paris, Nilsson, Per Lamm, [1904].
First edition of these vignettes of bohemian life in fin-de-siècle Paris by author and critic Willy, illustrated by nearly one hundred photographs of the author himself, as well as Marcel Boulestin, Marcelle Rossat, and Colette’s famous French bulldog, Toby-Chien.
£600
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CORNEILLE, Pierre.
Nicomède tragedie.
Rouen, Laurens Maurry, and Paris, Guillaume de Luyne, 1653.
Rare second edition (first 1651) of Corneille’s tragedy of sibling rivalry and the conflict of political and aristocratic ideals, set in Rome in the second century BC.
£750
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DAUDET, Alphonse.
Lettres de mon moulin. Impressions et souvenirs.
Paris, J. Hetzel et Cie, [1869].
First edition, rare, the issue arbitrarily designated ‘deuxième édition’ but published alongside the first, of Letters from my Windmill, Daudet’s celebrated sketches of Provençal life.
£2500
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[DE GRAAFT, attributed.]
Avantures secrettes, et plaisantes. Recueillies par Monsieur de G***.
Brussels, George de Backer, 1696.
Scarce first Brussels edition, published in the same year as the Paris edition, of this collection of twenty-four amorous and amusing tales set during the reign of Louis XIV, purporting to be true stories with the names changed to protect the characters’ identities.
£375
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DESENFANS, Noel Joseph.
Les deux Hermites, dédié a mylord Lyttelton …
A Londres; chez R. Davis … J Ridley … W Owen … 1773.
First and only edition, uncommon, of an epistolary novel by the future art dealer Noel Joseph Desenfans. The scene is Paris in the 1680s, the theme is Enlightenment, and the author’s aim was to inspire ‘l’horreur de l’oppression, sentiment nécessaire à l’harmonie de la Société, & vertu...
£650
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‘DORNIS, Jean’ [pseud. Élena BEER].
La voie douloureuse.
[Évreux, Charles Hérissey for] Paris, Calmann Levy, 1894.
First edition of Jean Dornis’s first novel, presented by the author to her brother-in-law, Edmond Raphael Beer, one of twenty-four copies on papier de Hollande.
£275
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DU BOURGET DE CHAULIEU, Nicolas.
Nicolai Burgetii Cadomaei ex regia litteratorum academia opera miscellanea ad illustrissimum virum...
Caen, Guillaume Richard Poisson, [c. 1700].
Rare Caen edition of the Latin and French poetry and prose of Nicolas du Bourget.
£375
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[DUELLING.]
Pieces en vers composées pour le prix de l’Academie.
Paris, Claude Barbin, 1671.
Seemingly unrecorded edition, one of two published in the same year with no precedence established, of Bernard de la Monnoye’s poem on the abolition of duelling, the first poem to be awarded a prize by the Académie Française, highly esteemed by both Perrault and Voltaire.
£850
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DUMAS, Alexandre.
Autograph letter, signed.
[Paris, not before 1859.]
A short note by the novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) sending a theatre ticket and arranging to meet the unknown recipient at the Comédie-française (‘theatre francais’) at midday the following day. He says that he will do whatever he can to obtain a small box at the Théâtre...
£750
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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
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[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
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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
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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