Poor Folk
London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1894. Very Good. Item #49452
London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1894. First English Language Edition. Octavo (20cm); publisher's yellow pictorial cloth blocked in black from a design by Aubrey Beardsley; xx,191,[1],15pp. Cloth a bit dust-soiled and toned at margins, especially spine, corners bumped, textblock a bit brittle due to inferior paper quality, contemporary ex libris and bookseller ticket to front pastedown. Very Good, bright and sound overall.
The first English language translation of Dostoevsky's first novel, originally published in Russian in 1846. The work is told through a series of letters between two impoverished distant cousins and is today deemed Russia's first "social novel." According to legend, Dostoevsky's friend Dmitri Grigorovich read the manuscript in one sitting, "then rushed out into the middle of the night to proclaim to the world the advent of a new Gogol" (Carol A. Flath, "Dostoevsky's Secrets" (2009), pp. 3, 13).
Price: $750.00