first edition
1881 · New York
by DOSTOEVSKY, Fyodor
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1881. VON THULO, Marie. . [House of the Dead]. Buried Alive. Or Ten Years of Penal Servitude in Siberia. New York: Henry Holt and Company 1881
First American edition of Dostoevsky's "House of the Dead", and the author's first publication in the United States. The first London edition was published the same year and is the first appearance of any of Dostoevsky's works in English. Octavo (7 3/8 x 4 7/8 inches; 186 x 125 mm). [8], 361, [1 blank], [2, ads] pp. Author's name spelled "Fedor Dostoyeffsky" on the title page. Issued posthumously the year of his death. We could only find only one of the first American editions at auction in the past 40 years, and it was possibly defective, and two copies of the 1st English edition at auction, both of which were rebacked.
Publisher's full green cloth. Pictorially stamped on front cover and spine in black and lettered in gilt. Cloth stamped with a prison scene. Brown coated endpapers. Spine very slightly sunned. Minor shelfwear to head and tale of spine. Cloth with some minor soiling, mainly to front board. Some chipping to cloth along upper edge of front board. Binding a bit skewed. A 1-inch closed tear to leaf E7, not touching any letters. A number of other leaves with small closed marginal tears, never affecting text. Leaves H3-H7 with some abrasions to upper corner, not affecting text. A few leaves with some light staining. Front free endpaper is a bit creased and with a small tear. Previous owner's old ink signature on front flyleaf. Still overall a very good copy.
A semi-autobiographical story later know as "House of the Dead" and translated by Marie von Thilo from the Original publication in 1860-62 in the journal Vremya. Written after his release from prison, Dostoevsky describes here, through a fictional narrative, the details of his own life in Siberia and that of the prisoners incarcerated with him (usually using their real names). "The House of the Dead was the work that had the greatest success-the story of the country's most heinous criminals written by a newly released prisoner. The work had direct relevance to the current debate on necessary reforms in the Russian legal and penal system, and its message that there was no greater agony for man than to be deprived of his freedom could not help but attract attention in a period of liberalization. But what guaranteed the work immortality was the extraordinary artistry in the writing. 'One saw in the author a new Dante who had descended into the inferno,' one contemporary critic recalled, 'and this inferno was made all the worse by the fact that it existed not only in the writer's imagination but also in reality'... Tolstoy considered Notes from the House of the Dead 'the finest work in all of modern Russian literature'" (Kjetssa, Fyodor Dostoevsky,: A Writer's Life, 136, 366).
HBS 68596.
$3,500. (Inventory #: 68596)
First American edition of Dostoevsky's "House of the Dead", and the author's first publication in the United States. The first London edition was published the same year and is the first appearance of any of Dostoevsky's works in English. Octavo (7 3/8 x 4 7/8 inches; 186 x 125 mm). [8], 361, [1 blank], [2, ads] pp. Author's name spelled "Fedor Dostoyeffsky" on the title page. Issued posthumously the year of his death. We could only find only one of the first American editions at auction in the past 40 years, and it was possibly defective, and two copies of the 1st English edition at auction, both of which were rebacked.
Publisher's full green cloth. Pictorially stamped on front cover and spine in black and lettered in gilt. Cloth stamped with a prison scene. Brown coated endpapers. Spine very slightly sunned. Minor shelfwear to head and tale of spine. Cloth with some minor soiling, mainly to front board. Some chipping to cloth along upper edge of front board. Binding a bit skewed. A 1-inch closed tear to leaf E7, not touching any letters. A number of other leaves with small closed marginal tears, never affecting text. Leaves H3-H7 with some abrasions to upper corner, not affecting text. A few leaves with some light staining. Front free endpaper is a bit creased and with a small tear. Previous owner's old ink signature on front flyleaf. Still overall a very good copy.
A semi-autobiographical story later know as "House of the Dead" and translated by Marie von Thilo from the Original publication in 1860-62 in the journal Vremya. Written after his release from prison, Dostoevsky describes here, through a fictional narrative, the details of his own life in Siberia and that of the prisoners incarcerated with him (usually using their real names). "The House of the Dead was the work that had the greatest success-the story of the country's most heinous criminals written by a newly released prisoner. The work had direct relevance to the current debate on necessary reforms in the Russian legal and penal system, and its message that there was no greater agony for man than to be deprived of his freedom could not help but attract attention in a period of liberalization. But what guaranteed the work immortality was the extraordinary artistry in the writing. 'One saw in the author a new Dante who had descended into the inferno,' one contemporary critic recalled, 'and this inferno was made all the worse by the fact that it existed not only in the writer's imagination but also in reality'... Tolstoy considered Notes from the House of the Dead 'the finest work in all of modern Russian literature'" (Kjetssa, Fyodor Dostoevsky,: A Writer's Life, 136, 366).
HBS 68596.
$3,500. (Inventory #: 68596)