Foreign Literature
Contact Donovan Rees
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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[SAURIN, Bernard-Joseph, attributed.]
Le nouvel an, pöeme heroī-fou.
‘A Brochuro-manie, l’an du deluge des Almanachs’, [i.e. Paris?], 1751.
An extremely rare satirical tale of two lovers in nine chants, fictitiously printed in ‘Brochuromania’ during the ‘year of the deluge of almanacks’, satirising the craze for literary almanacks in eighteenth-century France.
£950
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SCARRON, Paul.
Le marquis ridicule, ou la comtesse faite à la haste. Comedie … Suivant la copie imprimée à Paris.
[Leiden, Elzevir,] 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 Elzevirian provenance.
£650
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UGARTE, Manuel; Georges FOUCART, translator.
‘Contes de la Pampa’.
Paris, [c. 1923–5].
A fine, largely unpublished manuscript, with French translations of all fourteen stories from Miguel Ugarte’s Cuentos de la Pampa (1903, here translated from the 1920 edition).
£950
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VERLAINE, Paul, and Léon LEBÈGUE (illustrator).
Fêtes gallantes.
Paris, F. Ferroud for the Librairie des Amateurs, 30 July 1913.
Limited edition on vélin teinté d’Arches, numbered 430 of 500 copies, with etchings by Lebègue. First published in 1869, Verlaine’s Fêtes gallantes are here exquisitely printed and illustrated by Léon Lebègue (1863 – 1944) and finely bound by Flammarion.
£750
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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
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‘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
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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
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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
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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