TOLSTOY, Leo.

£4,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Anna Karénina. First edition in English, first issue, of Tolstoy's tragic love story, following publication in Russian in 1878. The translator, Nathan Haskell Dole, also produced Tolstoy's 20-volume Collected Works in 1899. Dole was a prolific translator in many languages and a popular member of the Boston social and literary set alongside Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Julia Ward Howe.This copy has all the points of first issue: sheets bulk to 35 mm, floral patterned endpapers, "13 Astor Place" on title page, no front adverts, and 5 pp. of rear adverts not listing Russian titles. Later issues have front and rear adverts listing Tolstoy and other Russian novelists, while later editions have no adverts, omit the "13 Astor Place" address, and are printed on thinner paper bulking closer to 25 mm.The first issue is known in several variant cloth colours, some with a larger Imperial eagle design to the front board, though these are taken to be variant states rather than points of issue.

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