Nov' [Virgin Soil].

£4,500 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

Fine copy of the rare true first edition in book form of Virgin Soil, Turgenev's last and longest novel. It was this work that established the writer as a global political and literary authority. In it, the psychological depth combined with the vivid descriptions of the desolate Russian countryside and its rural villages lend the novel a photographic quality not present in his earlier work - a harshness and rhythm which is the sign of Turgenev's ultimate artistic maturity. Virgin Soil offers a complex and careful examination of the political unrest of Turgenev's times. If in Fathers and Sons Turgenev tactfully examined the nature of nihilist theories in the young generation, in Virgin Soil the writer confronts the full force of populism, a radicalised and highly politicised offspring of nihilism. Bound for the celebrated English writer Maurice Baring (1874-1945). His bookplate was designed by his friend, the prolific writer Hilaire Belloc. The two men met in Oxford in 1897, and Belloc wrote on the ex-libris 'Here goes a ship with a cargo of books to the City of Dreams'. First edition; 2 vols, 8vo (18 x 11.5 cm); with half-titles, illegible red pencil to half-title of vol.II, top edge gilt; near contemporary vellum backed grey boards by Birdsall of Northampton with their stamp, a fine set; 283, 244 pp.

• Binding: Hardcover

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