Our Notes & References

First edition, first issue, of the first complete translation of Bulgakov’s masterpiece: a “highly readable” translation (France) that captures the “tremendous verve” of Bulgakov’s original (Curtis).

The dramatist and prose-writer Mikhail Bulgakov went to his grave in 1940 without completing the final editing of his magnum opus, The Master and Margarita – a book which he knew had no chance of being published in the USSR during his lifetime. It was only in 1966-67, after the cultural liberalisation of the post-Stalinist Khrushchev era, that an expurgated edition of this novel was serialised in the journal Moskva.

Translators rushed to make this literary sensation available to a non-Russian readership. Just months after its journal publication Mirra Ginsburg had already produced an English version; however, it soon emerged that being based on the Moskva edition, it was lacking some 23,000 words. Michael Glenny, at the time “one of the most respected translators of Russian literature (Curtis), managed to obtain a fuller version of Bulgakov’s manuscript; and his translation, the first complete one in English, appeared in November, 1967.

Provenance

Robert Eden Martin (b. 1940; American lawyer and noted collector of Russian, British and American literature works).

Bibliography

Curtis, J.A.E. A Reader’s Companion to Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”. Brookline, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2019; France, P., ed. The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; Weeks, L. D. The Master and Margarita: A Critical Companion. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996.