Uncommon treatise between Catherine's Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and inbetween two Russo-Turkish wars of the 18th century.
Very rare fiist editoion of this travel to areas "almost completely closed to Europeans" (Vigasin): the first significant Russian publication on Central Asia, "the first geographic exploration of Uzbekistan" (Lebedev) with a detailed description of silk production, and most probably the first printed Russian-Persian vocabulary.
The first literary work wholly written in modern Ukrainian: a important edition of the main book written by "the father of modern Ukrainian literature" (Encycl. Britannica). This is the first edition authorised by the author and the first to include 4 parts, with a dictionnary of more than 1000 Ukrainian words. A very rare book: only two copies in WorldCat and no copy traced outside Russia and Ukraine in recent decades.
SHAFONSKII, Afanasiy Filimonovich
Opisanie morovoi iazvy… [Description of the Plague…in Moscow from 1770 to 1772]
A rare case of a Russian 18th-c. book in Mariia Fedorovna's library: the first Russian scientific work on the plague. An exceptional copy of a major work.
The preferred, large-paper issue attractively bound in full red morocco richly gilt. This edition contains the very first publication of the Travels; and the first illustrated edition of the Memoirs: overall with almost 40 plates including 11 hand-coloured, some with gilt highlights. A great example.
POE, Edgar Allan, and OUYDA [pseud. for Maria Louise RAME]
Izbrannye Razskazy [i] Dozhdlivyy Iyun [Selected Short Stories, and A Rainy June]
Very rare Poe curiosity, showing on the cover a portrait of....somebody completely different! Together with a short story by a female author.
An important and very rare work on superstitions and beliefs of the peoples of the Russian empire under Catherine the Great. With captivating paragraphs and descriptions. An attractive example of the first edition.
Famous edition of the best Russian fabulist, and probably the first small-format book in Russia. A lovely example in full green morocco.
A rare St. Petersburg imprint, complete with exotic views and maps: first edition of these 4 volumes giving a taste of Pushkin's Russia for German-speaking readers. From St. Petersburg to Petrozavodsk, the Urals and the extreme north-eastern Siberia, through Russian literature, the Empress Maria Fedorovna and the famous fair of Nizhnii-Novgorod.
Very rare manuscript collection of theological and philosophical texts, including some forbidden by Catherine the Great's government in the 1780s. Very well preserved in its contemporary binding. With a poem authored most likely by the compiler of the manuscript and dedicated to the opening of the bronze horseman, the celebrated monument to Peter the Great inaugurated by Catherine in St. Petersburg.
Aesop's fables in red morocco with the arms of the Russian Empress: a fine imperial copy of this lovely edition, illustrated with 60 engraved plates.
HERVEY, James, and Elizaveta NILOVA (transl.)
Nadgrobnyia razmyshlenia [Meditations among the Tombs]
First Russian edition of an English 'graveyard' literary work: by a female translator, dedicated to a woman, and later confiscated by Catherine the Great. Very rare.
Very rare first Russian edition of Walter Scott's Paul's Letters to His Kinsfolk in Russian, published at the height of Pushkin's fame. No copy traced in the UK nor the USA.
Attractive example of this scarce anti-revolutionary tract, published when Catherine the Great was distancing herself from some consequences of the French philosophers' thoughts. In contemporary binding ith zig-zag Russian endpapers.
PLATON [Petr LEVSHIN, later Metropolitan of Moscow]
Pravoslavnoe uchenie ili sokhrashchennaia khristianskaia bogosloviia, dlia Ego Imperatorskago Vysochestva … Tsesarevicha i Velikago Kniazia Pavla Petrovich.. [Orthodox Teaching, or Christian Theology Abridged, for His Imperial Highness…the Tsarevich and Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich].
First edition of this Catechism for Tsarevich Pavel, the "first textbook of Orthodox theology in Russia" by an important religious figure of 18th-c. Russia, whom Voltaire called "the Russian Plato". Very rare: no copy at auction and only 3 copies in libraries outside Russia.