Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Detstvo i otrochestvo. [Childhood and Boyhood.] St Petersburg: Eduard Prats, 1856. [Bound with:] Aleksandr Sergeevich Griboedov (1795-1829). Gore ot uma. [Woe from Wit]. St Petersburg: Nicolay Tiblen, 1862.
The rare first edition of Tolstoy's second book, published in the same year as his first. RBH and ABPC record just four copies having sold at auction in over 35 years, two of which as part of renowned collections (Fekula and Eden Martin, both at Christie’s). Tolstoy’s short stories earned him considerable fame, and approval from established writers such as Ivan Turgenev, years before War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Detstvo i otrochestvo is sometimes incorrectly catalogued as Tolstoy's first book; the two individual parts, Childhood and Boyhood, were completed first (in 1852 and 1854), but Voennye razskazy passed the censor two weeks earlier (on 11 May 1856). The second work is the ‘corrected’ second complete Russian edition of Griboedov’s Gore ot uma, a satirical classic play regarded by Aleksandr Blok as ‘the greatest work in Russian literature’. First published in censored fragments in the 1830s, the celebrated full text did not pass the Russian censors before the first complete Tiblen edition earlier in 1862. First work: Kilgour 1192; Fekula 5324; not in Smirnov-Sokol’skii, Moia biblioteka.

Octavo (181 x 118mm). First work with the 1p. index at end (some faint spots and stains). 19th-century Italian half vellum over marbled boards, remains of manuscript spine label (lightly rubbed).

‘Biblioteca Russa Roma’ (ink stamps) – unidentified Russian reading room stamp – Russian inscription listing author and title for each book – colour pencil markings to title and endleaves.

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