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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. AKHMATOVA, Anna Andreevna, translator.

    Голоса поэтов. Стихи зарубежных поэтов в переводе...

    Moscow, “Progress”, 1965.

    First edition of Akhmatova’s translations of a selection of pieces by Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Yugoslavian, Romanian, Norwegian, and Indian poets.

    £450

  2. ASCHEHOUG, Torkel Halvorsen.

    Social-økonomik: en videnskabelig fremstilling af det menneskelige samfunds økonomiske virksomhed.

    Christiania, H. Aschehoug, 1903–1908.

    First edition of a systematic handbook on economics written by the Norwegian lawyer, political scientist, politician, historian, and economist Torkel Halvorsen Aschehoug (1822–1909).

    £350

  3. BIEBL, Konstantin.

    Zloděj z Bagdadu [The thief of Baghdad].

    Prague, Hyperion, 1925.

    First edition, a collection of fourteen poems.

    £200

  4. [BLIXEN, Karen.] DINESEN, Isak, pseud.

    Babettes Gaestebud.

    Copenhagen, Forlaget Fremad, [1952].

    First edition in book form of Babette’s Feast by Danish author Karen Blixen (1885–1962), author of Out of Africa.

    £200

  5. HOSSCHIUS, Sidronius.

    Sidronii Hosschii e Societate Iesu elegiarum libri sex. Praemittuntur illustrissimorum virorum poemata in...

    Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1656.

    First collected edition of the neo-Latin verse of the Flemish Jesuit and poet Sidronius Hosschius (Sidron de Hossche, 1596–1653), edited after his death by his fellow poet Jacques van de Walle (1599–1690), and prefaced with poems on Hosschius’ death commissioned by the future Pope Alexander VII...

    £600

  6. KOLLÁR, Jan. 

    Díla básnická … we dwau djljch [‘A Collection of Poems … in two parts’]. 

    Buda, no publisher, but ‘with the types Gyuriána a Bagó’, 1845. 

    First collected edition of Jan Kollár’s works, inscribed to fellow poet and ‘brother Slav’ Ognjeslav Utješenowić-Ostrožinski, with an additional autograph sonnet written in his honour. 

    £1750

  7. KUNDERA, Milan.

    Smĕšné lásky. Tři melancholické anekdoty.

    Prague, Československý spisovatel, 1963.

    First edition of all three volumes of the trilogy which makes up Kundera’s early collection of short stories, Laughable Loves. ‘My writing took flight with the first story for Laughable Loves. This was my Opus 1. Everything I'd written prior to it can be considered prehistory’ (Kundera).

    £500

  8. KUNDERA, Milan.

    Žert [The Joke].

    Prague, Československý spisovatel, 1967.

    First edition of Kundera’s first novel, The Joke, which gives a satirical account of the political atmosphere in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s.

    £400

  9. LAGERLÖF, Selma.

    Bannlyst. En berättelse.

    Stockholm, Albert Bonniers Förlag, [1918].

    First edition: Lagerlöf’s pacifist novel, The Outcast, published towards the end of 1918, in which she argues for a re-examination of the state of modern Western society.

    £100

  10. MITFORD, Algernon Bertram, translator.

    The Tale of forty seven Ronins …

    Tokyo, Bible & Tract Repository [and (colophon:) Chōshichi Kurimoto], Meiji 25 [1892].

    A seemingly unrecorded Tokyo edition of this famous tale of samurai vengeance, translated into English.

    £850

  11. MITFORD, Algernon Bertram, translator.

    英譯. 佐倉宗五郎之傳. The Ghost of Sakura. Translated into English … With...

    Tokyo, Seishi-bunsha, 1892.

    Extremely rare Tokyo-printed edition of this English rendition of the tale of Sakura Sōgorō, the legendary peasant-martyr of seventeenth-century Japan.

    £450

  12. NEZVAL, Vítězslav.

    Veliký Orloj [The Great Clock].

    Prague, Fr. Borový, 1949.

    First edition, a lengthy collection of poems inscribed by Nezval to his sisters and dated 11/4/1949.

    £450

  13. PITTER, Přemysl.

    Domovu i exilu [Home and Exile].

    London, Čechoslovák-FCI, [1956].

    First editions, association copies, of a series of radio transcripts by the humanitarian Protestant lay preacher and educator Přemysl Pitter (1895–1976), often described as the ‘forgotten Czech Schindler’, owned by the Czech-Jewish poet, novelist, and Holocaust survivor H.G. Adler.

    £850

  14. PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.

    Můj rodokmen [My genealogy].

    [Prague, Průmyslová tiskárna, 1937.]

    First edition, privately printed, of this Czech translation of Pushkin’s Moia rodoslovnaia (‘My genealogy’, 1830), the great Russian poet’s defence of his ancestry against some recent racial slurs. The fine illustrations are by Karel Svolinský (1896–1986), who is best known for his...

    £250

  15. [PUSHKIN, Alexander.]

    LÉNSTRÖM, Carl Julius. Alexander Puschkin. Rysslands Byron. Ett Skaldeporträtt … första [-sednare]...

    Uppsala, Leffler och Sebell; 1841.

    First edition, very rare, of a study of Pushkin by the Swedish literary historian C. J. Lénström delivered at the Gustavian Auditorium on 8 December 1841.

    £350

  16. RADIUS, J.

    S. C. de. Characteristic Features of Russian and Slavic Poetry, with Specimens, translated by English Authors …

    London, printed by Seyfang & Co. [for the author], 1854.

    First and only edition. This little book contains what must be some of the earliest translations of Ukrainian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Slovene, Slovak, and Sorb verse into English. It certainly offers an early example of comparative Slavonic studies. Most of the specimens, however, are Russian, among them...

    £325

  17. [RARITIES AND PROVERBS.]

    Lyste van Rariteiten, die verkocht zullen werden op den 32 van Bokkem-maand, in den Jaren dat tweemaal...

    ‘Gedrukt in Arabien, midden op de Zand-Zee, in’t vervalle Kasteel van den razenden Roeland’ [i.e. Amsterdam?, 1706?].

    A bizarre series of fictitious auction catalogues of books and objects, the auctions taking place on impossible dates (‘the 32nd of smoked herring month’), followed by collections of proverbs; an extra-illustrated copy from the library of Sir William Stirling Maxwell.

    £5500

  18. 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 in the...

    £1100

  19. 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

  20. STRINDBERG, August.

    Tschandala. Berättelse fran 1600–talet.

    Stockholm, C. & E. Gernandts Förlags, 1897.

    First Swedish edition: a Gothic tale, set in Skane thirty years after the Swedes took the province from the Danes in 1658.

    £250