A rare example of Russian text of the Enlightenment

[CATHERINE II, the Great]

Nakaz [...] dannyi komissii o sochinenii proekta novogo ulozheniia.

Instruction [...] pour la commission chargee de dresser le projet d'un nouveau code de loix.

Instruction fúr die zu Verfertigung des Entwurfs zu einem neuen Gesetz-Buche verordnete Commission.

Instrvctio [...] coetvi convocato ad conficiendam ideam novi legvm codicis

Publication: Imp. Akad. Nauk, Skt. Peterburg, 1770.

[CATHERINE II, the Great], Nakaz […] dannyi komissii o sochinenii proekta novogo ulozheniia.

Instruction […] pour la commission chargee de dresser le projet d’un nouveau code de loix.

Instruction fúr die zu Verfertigung des Entwurfs zu einem neuen Gesetz-Buche verordnete Commission.

Instrvctio […] coetvi convocato ad conficiendam ideam novi legvm codicis

A lovely example of this famous edition of Catherine’s celebrated Great Instructions, much inspired by important European philosophers of the Englightenment.

Read More

£3,950

In stock

Our Notes & References

“The best and most luxurious edition” of Catherine’s famous ‘Great Instructions’, such described by Count M.A. Korf, then director of the Imperial Library. First published and “signé de la propre main de Sa Majesté Impériale” in 1768; this edition however is the only in several languages and illustrated.

These instructions were “largely compiled and adapted by Catherine personally from the texts of Montesquieu and Beccaria. Although the project was never brought to fruition, the impulse behind it stands as one of the nobler concepts of Catherine’s reign” (Fekula 2013, for a later edition). A major document of the Enlightenment, it condemned torture and capital punishment and endorsed such principles as the equality of all before the law.

The illustration consists of two detailed symbolic engravings, each repeated once, by Roth (d. 1798), an engraver from Nuremberg who mostly worked in Russia.

“The most magnificent and desirable of the more than 40 editions of the Nakaz” (Widener) of “one of the most remarkable political treatises ever compiled and published by a reigning sovereign in modern times” (I. de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (1981), p. 151). Some great scholarly publications have taken place among these numerous editions, especially published in St. Petersburg in 1893 (using the French text from this edition) and 1907, as well as the more recent The Nakaz of Catherine the Great: Collected Texts (2010), with a bibliography of the 43 editions, edited by Butler and Tomsinov.

Bibliography

Drage 208; Fekula 2013; Sopikov 6456 (‘best edition’); SK 2151; Widener M., Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library, on their copy, exhibited in 2012.

Item number

1845

 

Physical Description

Quarto (26.3 x 20.5 cm). Title pages in Russian, Latin, German and French, 403 pp. with 4 allegorical head- and tailpieces engraved by Christopher Melhior Roth after Jacob Shtelin.

Binding

Contemporary full Russian calf, spine with raised bands stamped in bling, label lettered in Russian, patterned endpapers, red edges.

Condition

Binding covered with clear adhesive film, dampstain to back cover; very occasional light spotting, otherwise a lovely, attractive example.

Request More Information/Shipping Quote

    do you have a question about this item?

    If you would like more information on this item, or if you have a similar item you would like to know more about, please contact us via the short form here.

      X