AKHMATOVA, Anna Andreevna. Iz shesti knig. Stikhotvoreniia [From six books. Poems]. Leningrad, Sovetskii Pisatel’, 1940.
12mo, pp. 327, with a frontispiece portrait of Akhmatova by N. A. Tyrsa; a very good copy in the original printed wrappers; a few short tears repaired to spine, minor wear to edges.
First edition: Akhmatova’s first publication after an enforced silence of almost 20 years. It was recalled by the State a few weeks after publication, and nothing else by Akhmatova was published in the Soviet Union until the late 1950s.The book is a selection of poems from Akhmatova’s five early, uncensored books (Evening (1912), Rosary (1914), White Flock (1917), Plantain (1921) and Anno Domini (1922)), together with 27 previously unpublished poems from the collection Reed (Trostnik), written between 1924 and 1940. Reed was never published as a separate volume: its first poems to be published appeared here in Iz shesti knig under the title Willow (Iva). Others appeared in 1961 in a collection called Poems 1909-1960, and most, but not all, were included in the less heavily censored collection The Flight of Time in 1965 (see next item).
Kilgour 8; Tarasenkov, p. 24.
£950
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