BULGARIN, Faddei Venediktovich.

Giovanni Vixighin ovvero i costumi russi. Romanzo satirico-morale ... volgarizzato dall'originale russo per A[ngelo] Somazzi. Vol. I [–IV].

Capolago, Tipografia Elvetica, 1831[–2]. 4 vols. bound in two, pp. 214, [2, blank]; 240; 219, [3]; 280, [2], with a half title and an index leaf in each volume, a final errata leaf in volume IV, and eight mezzotint plates of illustrations; some light foxing throughout, but a very good copy in attractive contemporary Italian dark green diced half calf and textured boards, red morocco labels, spine gilt and numbered direct. First edition in Italian of Ivan Vyzhigin (1829), apparently the first full-length Russian novel to appear in the language. Bulgarin’s work was the first popular Russian novel, and pioneer translations also appeared in French, German and English.‘Son of a Polish rebel, drifter, soldier of fortune with Alexander I’s armies and then Napoleon’s, prisoner of war, solicitor, associate of the Decembrists, police informer, plagiarist, cutthroat journalist, pioneering feuilletonist, novelist, and landowner – Bulgarin’s life was no less colourful than those of the heroes of his picaresque novels, which, beginning with the tremendous commercial success of Ivan Vyzhigin in 1829, seemed to usher in an age of prose and professional authorship in Russian letters. Indeed, the early 1830s hailed Bulgarin as no less a prose writer than Pushkin was a poet’ (Terras, Handbook of Russian Literature, pp. 63-4). He was co-editor, with Nikolai Grech, of the Northern Bee, which attacked Pushkin and others, and Pushkin published several devastating responses.The translation is by the engineer, journalist and radical-turned-ultraconservative Angelo Somazzi (1803-1892), of Montagnola in Ticino, ‘who with long and grinding labour, and without teachers, had had to learn to read and write cyrillic characters, study Russian grammar, and translate anyhow for a good 12 hours a day’ (Somazzi, La politica del’ordine). The Tipografia Elvetica was historically important as a publisher of propaganda during the Risorgimento, safe from Italian censorship.OCLC and ICCU together show only two copies: National Library of Switzerland, and Potenza.

• GBP 1,000.00 > Andere Währungen
• Bestellnummer: F1407

• Antiquariat: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)