BUNIN, Ivan. Dark Avenues & Other Stories. Trans. from the Russian by Richard Hare. London: John Lehmann. 1949. 8vo. First British edition. Publisher’s dark blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the fabulous dust jacket designed by Humphrey Spender. A near fine copy. The cloth just very slightly marked, gilt a trifle dulled, tips slightly bumped. The binding tight and square, with mild spots to textblock edges and very occasionally within, largely fine with ‘1/6’ in ink to front endpaper top corner. The dust jacket unclipped (9s 6d net), slightly nicked to spine head, centre of spine and a couple of the corners, but unusually well-preserved.
Collects twenty of the 38 total short stories originally published in Paris in 1946, eleven of which first appeared in New York in 1943. Bunin, the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1933), seemed heir apparent to the Russian literary heavyweights of Tolstoy, Turgenev and Chekhov. Yet he remains far less known than these forefathers, and even less read, unfathomably. The collection here quite fantastic, including ‘The Legend’ which Bunin claimed was the best story he ever wrote. The stories depict love in all forms and types, though usually the dark and stormy kind. His descriptive prowess is in full flow, and the translator, Richard Hare, in his introduction commends Bunin’s ability to depict Russia with remarkable ‘ vigour of imaginative memory, having emigrated to France after the Revolution, [and how he] managed to continue writing on Russian themes with a conviction undimmed by so many years of permanent exile’. Scarce, especially in this condition.
BUNIN, Ivan. Dark Avenues & Other Stories. Trans. from the Russian by Richard Hare. London: John Lehmann. 1949. 8vo. First British edition. Publisher’s dark blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the fabulous dust jacket designed by Humphrey Spender. A near fine copy. The cloth just very slightly marked, gilt a trifle dulled, tips slightly bumped. The binding tight and square, with mild spots to textblock edges and very occasionally within, largely fine with ‘1/6’ in ink to front endpaper top corner. The dust jacket unclipped (9s 6d net), slightly nicked to spine head, centre of spine and a couple of the corners, but unusually well-preserved.
Collects twenty of the 38 total short stories originally published in Paris in 1946, eleven of which first appeared in New York in 1943. Bunin, the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1933), seemed heir apparent to the Russian literary heavyweights of Tolstoy, Turgenev and Chekhov. Yet he remains far less known than these forefathers, and even less read, unfathomably. The collection here quite fantastic, including ‘The Legend’ which Bunin claimed was the best story he ever wrote. The stories depict love in all forms and types, though usually the dark and stormy kind. His descriptive prowess is in full flow, and the translator, Richard Hare, in his introduction commends Bunin’s ability to depict Russia with remarkable ‘ vigour of imaginative memory, having emigrated to France after the Revolution, [and how he] managed to continue writing on Russian themes with a conviction undimmed by so many years of permanent exile’. Scarce, especially in this condition.
