Search Results: Authors starting with P from PY Rare Books

First edition of this last collection of Parnok's poems: a fine copy inscribed by Parnok to the fellow poet Tikhon Churilin (1885-1946) whom the great poetess and Parnok's lover Marina Tsvetaeva also esteemed as a brilliant poet. A member of various circles of Moscow avant-garde artists and poets, including futurists, Churilin had known both women for a decade when this edition appeared.
Extremely rare: limited to 200 numbered copies. We could not trace any other copy at recent auctions outside Russia; Worldcat locates only one physical copy in Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin outside Russia.
Born to a family of Jewish descent and gifted writers (such as her sister Elizaveta and brother Valentin Parnakh), Sofiia Parnok (1885-1933) became famous for her poetic talent and her lesbian relationships, about which she wrote openly - an exception in Russia at the time. She had in particular a romance with Marina Tsvetaeva in 1914-16: Tsvetaeva left her husband (temporarily) to move with Parnok, and wrote for her… Read More

First and only Russian edition of this guidebook for small libraries, authored by the prominent American librarian and second female president of the American Library Association (1915-1916).
Plummer studied at Wellesley College, as well as under Melvil Dewey at Columbia, later serving at the Pratt Institute Free Library, where she developed a library studies course and ultimately became head of the library. She also authored 'Training for Librarianship', another guide for future librarians and held a range of leadership positions in her field.
This Russian translation is based on the third edition of her work (Brooklyn, NY, self-published, 1902), but has been liberally altered by the author, both stylistically, and to account for the differences between Russia and America. For instance, while Plummer simply recommends the Dewey Decimal System, Povarnin begins by mentioning that a simple alphabetical categorization is more widely used in Russia's often very small lending libraries. In order to… Read More

FINE EXAMPLE OF THE DELUXE VERSION ON JAPON IMPÉRIAL (№24 OF ONLY 35 COPIES), WITH AN ORIGINAL WATERCOLOUR BY ZVORYKIN AND TWO ADDITIONAL SUITES, one in colour, like in the book, the other in black and white; the total print run was only 995 copies.
Zvorykin (1872 - 1942) was a Russian artist, graphic designer, icon painter, and translator. In 1915, along with other major Russian artists (Bilibin, Vasnetsov, Makovsky, Nesterov, Roerich), he founded the "Society for the Revival of Artistic Rus", an organization that aimed "to spread a wide acquaintance with ancient Russian art in all its manifestations" – an aim very visible throughout his style and especially in his Boris Godounov, in sharp contrast with Shukhaev's own Godounov published just two years earlier by the competing publishing house of J. Schiffrin. Zvorykin here placed half-titles and text within decorative frames in the Old Russian style featuring vyaz' typography, taken from old Cyrillic (Church) calligraphy.
In 1917-18 Zvorykin… Read More

FRESH EXAMPLE OF THE DELUXE VERSION ON JAPON IMPÉRIAL (№10 OF ONLY 18 COPIES), WITH THE TWO ADDITIONAL SUITES AND SIGNED BY SCHIFFRIN, who translated and published the work. One suite is in colour, like in the book, the other in black and white; the total print run was only 445 copies.
Shukhaev (1887-1973) studied at the Higher Artistic School of the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg from 1906 to 1912 under Dmitrii Kardovskii, who taught him the art of fine draughtsmanship.
The artist's collaboration with Schiffrin started with his illustrations for Pushkin's Queen of Spades, which met success upon publication in 1923. For his Godounov, Shukhaev drew on the Russian icon painting tradition, contemporary with the actual Boris Godunov, and managed to combine it with dramatic shapes and bold colours so representative of Russian art in Paris in the 1920s. The striking result demonstrates artist's extraordinary ability to visually communicate the atmosphere of the written work.
Shukhaev's Godounov was not… Read More

First edition, very rare: OCLC locates the Harvard copy only.
Nikolai Protasov (1865–1903), an active member of the Eastern Siberian section of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, was the first to go about a proper collection of the folk-songs of Siberia. In 1901 he recorded, on a phonograph, almost 150 songs, writing some of them out in notation. It is twenty of these songs which are published here as indicated in the long title: "From [the songs] collected in 1900 in the province of Irkutsk and the Transbaikal region by Nikolai Protasov. Arranged by Aleksei Petrov. Published … by the Song Commission of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society".Protasov's complete collection did not appear in his lifetime, and it has even been suggested that he burned his manuscripts in despair at not being able to see his work in print.
According to the preface, it was thanks to Rimsky-Korsakov that these songs appeared at all. He gave them to the Commission set up by the Tsar in 1897 to collect Russian… Read More

Exhaustive collection of striking, informative, curious and amusing popular Russian prints following the Russo-Turkish and Caucasian wars, but also covering a large variety of subjects in a very graphic way.
Rare: we could find only two copies of this album sold in 1975 and 2008 (the latter missing a plate); Worldcat locates only two physical copies (Indiana University, BnF).
The so-called lubok, or popular folk prints, appeared in Russia in the early 17th century and quickly became popular with peasants and urban lower classes for their accessible anecdotic images and narratives on a broad variety of themes. Sometimes reprinted many times over the years, they would often decorate peasants', merchants' and bourgeois' houses and even replace icons, books and newspapers.
The successful publisher and educator Ivan Sytin (1851-1932) was one of the largest producers and distributors of printed lubok in the second half of the 19th century; he presented his prints at various exhibitions, including the… Read More

The first complete poetic French translation of Pushkin's poem that "raised him to the summit of Russian Parnassus" (Terras). This is also the first separate book edition in French, and the second illustrated book by Pushkin in France.Strikingly illustrated by an original Russian female artist, and this copy inscribed by the translator: a politically-engaged playwright and one of the main figures of the feminist theatre movement in France.Only 500 copies printed: scarce, especially on the market, as we could not trace any example at auction outside Russia, including France. Worldcat locates only 5 copies: 2 in the US (NYPL and Pennsylvania) and 3 in France (Université Côte d'Azur, Strasbourg, BnF).Aleksandr Pushkin's (1799-1837) first complete book, Ruslan and Ludmila was published in 1820 and sold out almost immediately. In 1823, a French translation of an extract appeared in the Anthologie russe by Dupré de Saint-Maure: this was Pushkin's very first appearance in Western Europe. The full French… Read More