Beschreibung:

DOSTOEVSKY, Fyodor (1821-1881). Zapiski iz mertvago doma. [Memoirs from the House of the Dead]. St. Petersburg: Iosafat Ogrizko, 1862. The first complete edition of this early masterpiece by Dostoevsky , greatly appreciated by Tolstoy and which Lenin described as an 'unsurpassed work of Russian and world literature'. Dostoevsky's passionate description of life in a Siberian prison camp is based on his own experience; it 'provided the Russian public with its first, terrifying image of what lay ahead for those sentenced for a political crime [...] No writer was now more celebrated than Dostoevsky, whose name was surrounded with the halo of his former suffering' (Frank). This edition follows the publication of volume one only, by Eduard Prats, and the serialization in the periodical Vremi a, both also in 1862. Frank, Dostoevsky. The Stir of Liberation , p.140; Kilgour 279 (this edition). Two volumes, octavo (203 x 130mm). With the half-titles (possibly without final blanks, first four leaves of each vol. repaired at gutter, first leaf after title in vol. 1 repaired at corners and fore-edge, crayon marks on first half title, scattered spotting and soiling, worse in the first leaves of vol. 1, some blue ink marks with consequent show-through). Contemporary Russian quarter leather, paneled spines gilt including monogram VK in Cyrillic at foot (rebacked with the original spines laid on, new endpapers). Provenance : monogram VK on spines – unidentified stamps on initial pages.