“WHEN I SEE HER I AM NOT I: MY ARMS FALL SLACK, MY KEEN EYES BLUR”

LERMONTOV, Mikhail Yurievich. Song About Tsar Ivan Vasilyevitch his young bodyguard and the valiant merchant Kalashnikov. (London): The Aquila Press, 1929. Tall quarto, original full red, white and black morocco, uncut. $800.

Limited first edition, number 17 of only 750 copies on Mailiol hand-made paper, with striking illustrations and binding designed by Paul Nash.

After Pushkin, Lermontov is perhaps the greatest of Russian poets, and the main voice of Romanticism in Russian poetry. This work, most often known in English as The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov, became the basis for an opera (The Merchant Kalashnikov) by Anton Rubinstein in 1880. Artist Paul Nash, one of the leading proponents in Modernism in early 20th-century England, became very involved in the Society of Wood Engravers in the 1920s; his designs here display strong geometric abstraction. Ransom, Selective Check Lists of Press Books, 4.

Interior generally fine, light wear and toning to striking original binding. An extremely good copy.