[MOSKOVSKIE VEDOMOSTI .]

Thirty-two 'Notices' (8 illustrated) inserted as advertising supplements in the newspaper Moskovskie vedomosti [Moscow records], including announcements of bull- and bear-baiting events, lottery results, horse auctions, new medicines, mechanical theatricals, tobacco and new books.

Moscow, 1820, 1830, 1833-1835. 32 separate pieces, various formats and paginations (16 folio; 13 quarto – one doublesided, 2 quarto brochures pp. 4; and 3 octavo); some printed on both sides, several with attractive woodcut illustrations, many with borders of printers’ ornament, mostly uncut and in very good condition. Moskovskie vedomosti, the newspaper of Moscow University, was one of Russia’s longest-running and most significant periodicals, founded in 1756 and running continuously up to the 1917 Revolution. Published twice-weekly until 1842, it was edited in 1779-89 by N. I. Novikov, who transformed it into the major Enlightenment organ in Russia; from 1816-36 the editor was the writer Petr Ivanovich Shalikov (1767-1852).This collection of miscellaneous supplementary advertisements includes both public notices (lottery results in 1820, the opening of the Alexander Column in 1834, the sale of state bonds in 1835) and private advertisements (for Golovin’s ‘new shop for vodkas and liqueurs’ in 1820, for the ‘Magasin de Paris’ in time for Christmas 1834, etc.). The most substantial single item is a catalogue of New Books to be sold at the bookshop of Nikolai Nikolaev Glazunov in 1834, among them Pushkin’s newly-published History of the Pugachev Rebellion (20 roubles, 22 including postage) and the first authorized edition of Woe from Wit by Griboedov (10 roubles, ‘printed with the greatest care, on beautiful vellum paper, in the best type’). Other notable inclusions are the new novel Lunatic by Alexandr Fomich Vel’tman (as well as his utopia The Year 3448, 1833); and a Russian translation of The Last of the Mohicans.Several exhibitions and public performances are noted, among them a tattoo of horse-riding, drumming and gymnastics at the Moscow French Theatre, and shows by the mechanical theatres of Kuparenko and Krames. The Romanian-born Kuparenko (Iordache Cuparencu) was an aeronaut turned inventor, designer of a mechancial instrument, the ‘buzuton’; Krames presents four theatrical entertainments, among them ‘The Sorceror’s Palace’, a Scottish romance, with a ‘very naturalistic’ cossack dance at the end. Elsewhere advertised are a magnificent panorama of St Petersburg (180 x 20 ft.), and a ‘Kosmorama’ with scenes from Russian history.Much space is devoted to animals – their sale (English horses, such as Honest John, sired by Whisker), their exhibition (see the ‘feeding of the snakes’, also crocodiles and kangaroos), and their combat: 12 March 1833, for example, saw a fight between a wild Black Sea bull and the bear Evil Makrida – the audience was invited to bring their dogs to finish the job if the bear was not killed; at another event a leopard ‘from the shores of Africa … will be killed by English bulldogs for the pleasure of the Honourable Public’.Other ‘Notices’ advertise horse-races, a sale of Crimean and foreign wines, ‘prices current’ for tea, coffee, seeds, fruits, and Cuban cigars, charitable contributions to various Moscow institutions and a cure-all balsam to be demonstrated in all good pharmacies from Moscow to Tiflis.

• GBP 4,800.00 > autres monnaies
• Commande nro.: F1314.1

• libraire: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)