BELYI, ERENBURG, PIL'NIAK, REMIZOV, ZAMIATIN, ZOSHCHENKO,...

Literaturnaia Rossiia. Sbornik sovremennoi Russkoi prozy pod redaktsiei Vl. Lidina [Literary Russia. A Collection of contemporary Russian prose edited by Vladimir Lidin]. I [all published].

Moscow, ‘Novye Vekhi’, 1924. 8vo, pp. 403, [1], with 28 vignette portraits; a very good copy, slightly shaken, in the original printed paper wrappers with a typographic design in blue and black, spine browned and cracked (though sound), old booksellers’ stamps to rear cover. First edition of an avant-garde collection of short stories and excerpts from novels, with autobiographical sketches and bibliographies by each of the 28 contributors, all written especially for this collection.‘This is not anthology. Usually an anthology prints that which, in one way or another, is already well-recognized; in this collection there are authors who have no finished work to their name – other than this collection …’ (Introduction). Well-established authors such as Belyi, Remizov and Shaginian sit alongside future greats like Valentin Kataev, whose first novel was to appear later in the year, Leonid Leonov, with the early short tale ‘Petushikhinskii prolom’ (The break-up of Petushikha), and Konstantin Fedin, who contributes an extract from Goroda i gody (‘Cities and Years’, 1924) – this is apparently the first appearance in print of any part of ‘one of the first major novels in Soviet literature’ (Terras).The authorial biographies and bibliographies contain much of interest. Zamiatin, for example, notes that ‘In 1921-22, I wrote the novel We; the novel was translated into English in New York; in Russian it is still unpublished, and when it will be I do not know.’ Zoshchenko is characteristically wry – ‘In 1919 I returned to a primordial state. In 1921 I busied myself with literature’ – while Remizov turns his biography into a nine-page short-story of its own. Other notable contributions come from Ehrenburg, Grigor’ev, Nikitin, Pil’niak (an extract from The Naked Year) Seifullina, and Shaginian. The editor, Vladimir Germanovich Lidin [alias Gomberg], was himself a prolific writer of short fiction, and contributes a story from Myshinye budni (‘Drab days’, 1923). Literaturnaia Rossiia was evidently intended to continue with further volumes, but none was published.

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• libraire: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)