BULGAKOV, Mikhail.

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The Master and Margarita. A samizdat copy, formed of tear sheets from the first appearance in print of The Master and Margarita, which was serialized in two issues of the journal Moskow in November 1966 and January 1967 in censored form. Bound at the end of this copy is the uncensored material, which was not published in Russian until 1969. The text has many annotations in Russian, including reference marks in the text for the corresponding censored material. The annotations, many of which are in the same hand, may have been added by Mark Alexandrovich Kellerman, whose name is written in pencil on the rear free endpaper. Kellerman was a lawyer and copyright specialist based in Moscow, which may explain access to the uncensored text and the form of the present copy.The Moskow first printing eliminates much of the anti-Soviet satire, but it still caused an immediate sensation on publication. Although the novel was completed in 1938, like most of Bulgakov's prose it was not published until long after his death in 1940. The first edition in book form was published by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1967, in a still further censored version of the Russian text. The full text was first published in English in 1967 (there are two different English translations, one of the censored text and one of the full text).

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