Fyodor; Lena MILMAN ( translator ); George MOORE ( introduction ). Poor Folk.

by DOSTOEVSKY

£475 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

Dostoevsky for English Readers DOSTOEVSKY, Fyodor; Lena MILMAN ( translator ); George MOORE ( introduction ). Poor Folk. London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane . 1894. 8vo. Original yellow cloth, design to upper board and Keynotes device by Beardsley to spine, untrimmed; pp. xx, 191, [1 (blank)], 14 (publisher’s catalogue), [2]; title-page printed in red and black, Beardsley’s cover design and Keynotes device repeated to title and p. v, respectively; slight soiling to boards (heavier to spine), front hinge tender; lettering to spine dulled; a very good copy. First edition in English of Dostoevsky’s first novel, the third volume of the Keynotes series, instrumental in introducing Dostoevsky and his singular brand of naturalism to Anglophone readers. Written to fund Dostoevsky’s gambling debts and first published in 1846, this epistolary novel following the tragic lives of two impoverished cousins was a huge success in Russia. The British were slow to see the attraction of his work, with Victorian novels favouring neat plots and clear moral frameworks. The first appearance of Dostoevsky in English was Marie van Thilo’s liberal 1881 rendering of Dostoevsky’s Burned Alive , followed by Frederick Whishaw’s Crime and Punishment (1886), The Idiot (1887), and a handful of other novellas. Notably, The Brothers Karamazov would not be published in English until Constance Garnett’s translations began to appear in 1912, and it was only with the publication of Garnett’s twelve-volume Novels o

• Binding: Hardcover

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