'A BREATH OF FRESH AIR'
AKSAKOV, Sergei Timofeevich. Semeinaia khronika i vospominaniia [A Family Chronicle and recollections]. Moscow, L. Stepanova, 1856.
Large 8vo, pp. 565, [3] + errata leaf; some minor spotting, but a handsome copy in a contemporary Russian binding of green half morocco gilt, raised bands on spine.
First edition of Aksakov's masterpiece, which evokes 'with astonishing immediacy and understanding the life of the serf-owning nobility in eighteenth-century Russia' (Cambridge History of Russian Literature, p. 293). Aksakov (1791-1859), whom Terras terms 'a genius of reminiscence', started to write A Family Chronicle in 1840 at the suggestion of Gogol, and fragments of it were published anonymously in an anthology in 1846. When the complete book appeared in 1856 it was immediately hailed as a classic.'After the effeminate graces of Turgenev, the destructive logic of Tolstoy, the sublimely grotesque vistas of Dostoevsky, the relaxing and melancholy sweetness of Chekhov, the rude brutality of Gorky, Aksakov comes as a relief and a breath of fresh air' (D. S. Mirsky, introduction to M. C. Beverley's translation, Chronicles of a Russian Family, 1924).
Kilgour 14; Fekula 4488 (with bookplate of Nicholas II).
£1500
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