Beschreibung:

PUSHKIN, Alexander (1799-1837). Boris Godunov . St Petersburg: at the Press of the Department of Public Education, 1831. The first edition of Pushkin's favourite of his own texts, and among the rarest of his first editions (Smirnov-Sokol’skii). This attractive copy is complete with the half-title, and with Pushkin’s dedication to Karamzin 'whose genius inspired this work' – the last two volumes of Karamzin's History of Russia had been published in 1824, when Pushkin began writing. Boris Godunov , written while Pushkin was exiled to his estate, is the first Russian tragedy on a political theme, and written in blank verse. Pushkin wrote also under the influence of Shakespeare, having realized that 'Russia had no truly national drama, only an imitation of the neo-classical French school, and that it could only be created by returning to Russian themes and Russian folklore, and by making the Russian language a literary instrument fit to rank with the French and German languages for which it had been so often discarded in its own country... in other respects too it was revolutionary: it was broken up into scenes and episodes, it mingled poetry with prose, and made use of colloquial Russian speech' ( Oxford Companion to the Theatre, p.651). Sir John Russell later Ambassador to Ethiopia, bought this copy when he was third secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, during Stafford Cripps's wartime tenure as Ambassador. Kilgour 884; Smirnov-Sokol’skii, Pushkin, 25. Octavo (185 x 121mm). Pagination: [6], 142; with the half title and with the dedication to Karamzin (light and mostly marginal scattered spotting; a few short tears, two of which with old repairs). 19th-century marbled boards (light wear to the spine; extremities and sides lightly rubbed). Provenance : Russian bookseller’s small stamp on rear pastedown – Sir John Wriothesley Russell (1914-1984, diplomat; penciled note, dated 14 March 1940) – Bernard Quaritch, bookseller (penciled collation note, dated 1980).