First edition, sold for the benefit of proletarian militants and victims of the ‘Communist bourgeoisie’.more...
Poems by Pasternak who won the Nobel Peace prize in 1958, but declined it after enraging the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The title page states that he was on the blacklist of Soviet writers. The translation is by Armand Robin, a poet, translator and journalist, who is also described here as being on the blacklist for French writers. .see full details
A manuscript book of poetry and prose completed, according to the final page, on 24 April 1879, in Kishinev (modern-day Chi?inau, Moldova), then the capital of the Bessarabia Governorate in the Russian Empire.more...
Most of the work is either Russian (including pieces by Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Zhukovsky, Dmitry Minayev, Countess Rostopchina, Lev Mei, and a number by Apollon Maykov; also translations, from Beranger, Fallersleben, etc) or Polish (among them a number of songs for the stage), but there are occasional poems in French (‘Pouchkin’, Victor Hugo) and even English (‘Rose Leaves’ by Austin Dobson, and ‘The Fairy’s Home’ by Louis Henry French du Terreaux). The illustrations are accomplished ink drawings in the style of contemporary newspaper or journal illustrations, including fashionable parlour scenes and comic interludes.
The ten leaves removed at the opening contained, according to the contents leaves at the end, Pushkin’s Gavriliada: his blasphemous parody of the Annunciation, at the time a banned book in Russia which did not appear in print there, and even then only in a censored version, until 1907..see full details
First edition, large paper copy on vergé (and rare thus).more...
The scandalous memoirs of Philadelphia-born Harriet Ely Blackford, dubbed ‘Fanny Lear’, who conducted an affair with Grand Duke Nicholas Constantinovich, nephew of Czar Nicholas I between 1870 and 1874. In 1874 she was accused of stealing diamonds belonging to the imperial family and was banished from the court..see full details
First edition, a rare account of the short and tragic life of Ivan Antanovitch, who reigned briefly as an infant Emperor of Russia from 1740-1 before being spirited away after the coup of Elizabeth of Russia in 1741 and then conveniently assassinated in 1764, shortly after the accession of Catherine the Great.more...
George Woodward, affectionately dubbed ‘Mustard George’ by his contemporaries, was one of the pioneers of English caricature.more...
Like his drinking-partner Thomas Rowlandson, Woodward absorbed high and low culture omnivorously and paid keen attention to contemporary politics.
A Political Fair is ‘a fantastic survey of the international situation’ in 1807 and is considered one of Woodward’s finest images, the print catalogue of the British Museum devoting two full pages to its complex allegories. At the heart of the fair is a large booth (‘The Best-Booth in the Fair’) representing Great Britain holding aloft on its platform images of Britannia, John Bull, together with an Irishman, Scotsman and Welsh harpist gathered convivially around a punchbowl, while a waiter sweeps into the chamber below with a vast joint of roast beef on his platter. All this was typical of Woodward’s patriotism and was intended to portray the essential unity of the nation amidst the host of clamouring figures in the neighbouring booths representing the other nations. Napoleon, in tricorn and feathers, rebuffs a disgruntled Dutchman complaining about his King with the words ‘I never change Mynheer after the goods are taken out of the Shop’. High up on the right, the American booth displays a placard advertising ‘Much ado about Nothing with the Deserter’, a reference to the friction between Britain and the United States over recent defections from British to American ships and the ban on armed British ships in American ports. The Danish booth on the left advertises ‘The English Fleet and The Devil to Pay’ in reference to the hideous bombardment of Copenhagen by the British fleet in September that year.
Musical and theatrical references abound, with many of the placards punning on the titles of plays and musical performances then showing in London: Much ado about nothing, All’s well that ends well (Shakespeare), The Padlock (Bickerstaffe), The Deserter (Dibdin), The Double Dealer (on the Russian booth, by Congreve) and The English Fleet (Dibdin again)..see full details
