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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. VOLTAIRE, François Marie Arouet de.

    La Henriade, en dix chants; avec l’histoire abrégée des évènemens sur lesquels est fondée...

    Edinburgh, J. Watson, 1798.

    Rare Edinburgh edition of Voltaire’s epic poem on toleration and fanaticism.

    £150

  2. [VOLYNSKII A. pseud. [Akim Lvovich FLEKSER.]

    Parfenon. Sbornik Pervyi [Parthenon. First collection (All published)].

    St Petersburg “Parfenon” 1922.

    The first and only issue of a literary journal edited by A. Volynsky (1863–1926).

    £250

  3. ‘WALINCOURT, Vicomte de’ [i.e. FONTAINE DE RESBECQ, Eugène de].

    Voyage à Botany-Bay … suivi d’autres épisodes.

    Limoges, Martial Ardant brothers [Louis and Eugène Ardant], [1865?].

    First edition, very rare, of this light-hearted tale of a journey to Australia, in an attractive cartonnage binding.

    £475

  4. WAPPEROM, Jacobus Joannes. 

    Gezangen door J.J. Wapperom. 

    The Hague, 1805. 

    Very rare collection of songs by the Dutch notary and poet Wapperom (1763–1822), one of only a small number of copies produced, decorated by the author himself and distributed among his friends and family. 

    £675

  5. [WEDDING POETRY.]

    Applausi alli felicissimi sponsali dell’illustrissimo Sig. Cavaliere Deifebo Perini Brancadori, con l’illustrissima...

    Siena, Stamperia del Pubblico, 1699.

    Seemingly unrecorded collection of sonnets written to mark the marriage of two Sienese nobles, Deifebo Perini Brancadori and Ottavia Orlandini.

    £350

  6. WEST, Nathanael.

    Miss Lonelyhearts … with an Introduction by Alan Ross.

    London, The Grey Walls Press, [1949].

    First UK edition, with a new introduction by Ross. First published in 1933, this ‘acerbic’ black comedy set in New York during the Depression, was adapted and produced for radio by Bridson, broadcast on 25 May 1960, with Sam Wanamaker in the lead role, a male journalist writing an advice column under...

    £125

  7. WILLIAM OF TYRE; Giuseppe OROLOGGI, translator.

    Historia della guerra sacra di Gierusalemme, della Terra di Promissione,...

    Venice, Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1562.

    First Italian edition of William of Tyre’s (1130–1186) important account of the first two Crusades and of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with the addition of a seventeenth-century manuscript with a uniquely Italian rendition of the tale of the Wandering Jew.

    £2750

  8. YRVEN, Marcelle.

    La comédienne et le féminisme.

    Paris, L. Pichon, 1914.

    First edition of this feminist work on the necessity of a thorough literary and cultural education for women in theatre, by the celebrated actress Marcelle Yrven, presented to the editor-in-chief of Le Figaro’s literary supplement.

    £250

  9. ZACHARIÄ, Just Friedrich Wilhelm.

    Les quatre parties du jour, poëme traduit de l’allemand de M. Zacharie.

    Paris, J. B. G. Musier fils, 1769.

    First edition in French of this proto-Romantic poem on the times of day, splendidly bound with the arms of its dedicatee, the mentally ill Christian VII of Denmark and Norway.

    £1500

  10. ZAMIATIN, Evgenii Ivanovich.

    Nechestivye rasskazy [Impious Tales].

    [Moscow,] ‘Krug’ writers’ cooperative, 1927.

    First edition of a collection of eight short stories by the increasingly dissident Zamyatin, including ‘Iks’ [‘X’] and ‘Rasskaz o samom glavnom’ (‘Tale of the most essential thing’), ‘the single most important work of Zamjatin’s transitional period’ (Shane).

    £200

  11. ZOLA, Émile.

    La Curée.

    Paris, A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie, 1871.

    First edition of the second novel in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, La Curée. The first six volumes of the series were printed on ordinary paper only (no grand papier issue) and are all very rare.

    £1500

  12. ZOSHCHENKO, Mikhail Mikhailovich.

    Izbrannye rasskazy i povesti 1923-1956 [Collected stories and tales 1923-1956].

    Leningrad, ‘Soviet Writer’, 1956.

    First complete edition of Zoshchenko’s shorter prose fiction, including his stories for children; a presentation copy to his friend the dramatist, translator and poet Muza Konstantinovna Pavlova (1917-2006).

    £450

  13. ZVIAGINTSEVA, Vera Klavdievna.

    Na mostu. Stikhotvoreniia [On the Bridge. Poems.].

    Moscow, [Gostip,] 1922.

    First edition of one of Zviagintseva’s (1894–1972) earliest publications. She also produced translations of Armenian, Estonian, and Ukrainian poetry.

    £100