The Gambler and Other Stories – Fyodor Dostoevsky – Trans. Constance Garnett (William Heinemann, 1917)
The Gambler and Other Stories – Fyodor Dostoevsky – Trans. Constance Garnett (William Heinemann, 1917)
This William Heinemann first edition (1917) in Constance Garnett's translation is of interest to collectors of Fyodor Dostoevsky first editions, Constance Garnett translations, and early 20th century Russian literature in English.
About: A good copy in the original red cloth with decorated brown leather spine panels. Boards sound and clean with minor soiling and a small circular mark to the front panel; spine panels intact with legible lettering, wear to head with slight fraying; rear board generally sound with light corner wear. Text block toned at page edges as expected for 1917; a pencilled price notation to the title page verso. A solid and presentable copy of this important first English edition.
Details:
- Title: The Gambler and Other Stories
- Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Translator: Constance Garnett
- Publisher: William Heinemann, 21 Bedford St., London W.C.
- Publication Date: 1917
- Edition: First Edition (first English translation)
- Binding: Hardcover, original red cloth with decorated leather spine panels
- Condition: Good
- Dust Jacket Condition: None present
Synopsis: First English edition of Garnett's landmark translation of Dostoevsky's The Gambler, in the original Heinemann binding. A collectible copy of the foundational English-language text of one of Dostoevsky's most personal and psychologically intense works.
Review: Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Gambler (1867) is a short, ferociously concentrated novel drawn directly from the author's own ruinous addiction to roulette. Set in the fictional German spa town of Roulettenburg, it follows Alexei Ivanovich, a young tutor in thrall to gambling and to the capricious Polina, as fortunes are won and lost with dizzying speed. Constance Garnett's 1917 translation, published by William Heinemann as part of her monumental project to render the great Russian novelists into English, remains one of the defining versions of the text and a landmark of literary translation.