First atlas of St. Petersburg in Russia, inscribed to a patron of Gogol's

Nikolai Ivanovich Tsylov

[Text in Russian] Atlas Trinadtsati Chastei S. Peterburga s podrobnym izobrazheniem naberezhnykh, ulits, pereulkov, kazennykh i obyvatel'nykh domov [WITH] Alfabitnyi ukazatel' k Atlasu 13-ti chastei S. Peterburga [An Atlas of the Thirteen Parts of St. Petersburg with a detailed image of its embankments, streets, alleyways, and town houses [WITH] An Alphabetical Index] [Inscribed and Signed to Dmitry Yegorovich Benardaki]

St. Petersburg: s.i., 1849. Very Good. Item #21648

St. Petersburg: 1849. Two volumes; small quartos (26.5cm.); uniformly bound in publisher's blind-ruled purple cloth, gilt-lettered spines; atlas volume: 392 numbered street plans as well as one hand-colored map of the city and 13 hand-colored district maps (collated and complete); index volume: [6],279,[1],39pp. Cloth extremities rather faded, spines uniformly sunned to tan, a few plates trimmed a bit close, occasionally touching numbers, else a Very Good, internally fine set of the first atlas of St. Petersburg, albeit lacking errata leaf. Front free endpaper of the atlas inscribed and signed by Tsylov "To Dmitry Yegorovich Benardaki / With the sincerest devotion / From the author / Nikolai Tsylov").

Earliest atlas of the Russian city of St. Petersburg, compiled by the high-ranking officer Nikolai Ivanovich Tsylov (1801-1879). Tsylov's atlas was born of a smaller such work he had compiled, of a single district of the city. This had been received with such warmth that he felt compelled to produce the present work, a democratic and nearly microscopic depiction of the city in which the street plans are even demarcated by building materials (stone, wood, or a mix). The atlas is accompanied by a substantial index of the buildings, including a directory of the major townhouses, their inhabitants, and even the number of floors (rarely exceeding four). Of special note are the thirteen maps preceding each section, expertly hand-colored in all extant copies.

Based on auction records and library holdings it can be surmised that very few sets were issued, possibly by subscription or privately: of the three copies located in OCLC (Harvard, NYPL, Wisconsin) at least the Wisconsin copy is also inscribed by Tsylov. NUC adds a copy at the Library of Congress; COPAC adds copies at the British Library and Cambridge.

Provenance: Inscribed and signed by the author to Dmitry Yegorovich Benardaki (sometimes spelled Dmitrii Egorovich) (1799-1870), presumed to be the inspiration for Murazov in Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls. Already in the 1830s Benardaki had amassed an enormous fortune through speculation on wheat. He was first introduced to Gogol by the Russian historian Mikhail Pogodin, a relationship rather novelistically described by Henri Troyat in his biography of Gogol, Divided Soul (1973): "From [Benardaki's] conversation...Gogol discovered the ruthless world of competition and profit, and the struggle for market control. The eloquent and astute Benardaki became for him a personification of the practical man. The Russian of the future must be modeled upon this man. What a fine character for a novel this Christian millionaire would make!" (p. 200). A rather more grounded description of the relationship can be found in David Christian's article "The Neglected Great Reform," published in Russia's Great Reform, 1855-1881 (1994). According to Christian, Benardaki loaned Gogol some money in 1839 "and it may be that a grateful Gogol took him as his model for the virtuous tax farmer Muzarov" (p. 113). In any case, Benardaki's 1863 patent of nobility went up at Sotheby's in 2007 for an eye-watering sum.

Price: $15,000.00