Dostoevsky, F[yodor] M[ikhailovich].

Stavrogin’s Confession and the Plan of the Life of a Great Sinner. With introductory and explanatory notes. Translated by S[amuel]. S[olomonovitch]. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf.

Richmond [Surrey, England]: The Hogarth Press, 1922. First edition, first binding. Pages 1-6 are publisher’s ads, normally bound at the end. Mild shelf wear to board extremities. Light staining at board edges. Some chipping and staining to spine label. Pencil annotations to text throughout, indicating edits and re-pagination for subsequent edition. Otherwise, pages bright. Archival tape applied to gutter of half-title. A very good copy, with a unique place in Hogarth publication history. Publisher’s blue and white patterned cloth, with light blue spine and paper label title to front board and spine. Octavo. [4], 5-144, 1-6, [1], 145-169 pp. Item #17989

The present work contains several fragments of works by Dostoevsky: “Stavrogin’s Confession” (a chapter from the novel Besy, known in English as Demons); “The Plan of The Life of a Great Sinner,” a sketch for a novel that Dostoevsky never completed; and an unpublished chapter from The Possessed. The gathering and publication of these fragments is explained in the Translator’s Note and the additional prefatory note “New MSS. Of Dostoevsky,” attributed to the Russian Government, which detail the recent discovery of several of Dostoevsky’s notebooks in the Russian State Archives. Additionally, the Hogarth collection includes commentary by V, Friche and N. Brodsky (whose remarks were likewise initially published by the Russian Government), as well V. Komarovich, previously published in the periodical Builoe. From the commentary titled “The Unfulfilled Idea” — “An analysis of The Life which reveals the autobiographic substratum lets us see with greater certainty the personal traits in those other novels of Dostoevsky’s into which The Life of. Great Sinner split off.”.

Of the translation process, Leonard Woolf wrote, “Mrs. Woolf did not know Russian. We taught ourselves a little Russian in order to be able to understand Koteliansky’s problems in translating. The procedure was that Koteliansky translated the Russian book into very bad English in double-spaced lines, that Mrs. Woolf went through the text with him, sentence by sentence, and then put the translation into good English.” Kirkpatrick B2. This copy appears to have been used as a reference for the first American edition, a photo-offset reprint published in 1947. While the pencil markings do not appear to be in Leonard Woolf’s hand, the suggestions comport with the American edition’s contents and order. A valuable copy for enthusiasts of Hogarth Press and Dostoevsky’s printing history alike. Kirkpatrick B2.

Price: $450.00