"DOSTOEVSKY'S IMPACT ON THE MODERN LITERARY MIND IS UNRIVALED IN ITS SCOPE AND VITALITY": RARE FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH OF DOSTOEVSKY'S SEMINAL 1864 WORK, NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND, HERE IN ITS FIRST APPEARANCE IN ENGLISH AS LETTERS FROM THE UNDERWORLD, TOGETHER IN ONE VOLUME WITH THE FIRST EDITIONS IN ENGLISH OF HIS 1876 STORY, GENTLE MAIDEN, AND HIS 1847 NOVELLA, THE LANDLADY
(DOSTOEVKSY, Fyodor) DOSTOIEFFSKY, Fedor. Letters from the Underworld. London / New York: J.M. Dent / E.P. Dutton, (1913). Small octavo (4-1/2 by 7-inches), original gilt-stamped red cloth, pictorial endpapers. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
First edition in English of Dostoevsky's defining work that carved the path for his five great novels, titled here Letters from the Underworld, later known as Notes from Underground, its narrator ranked as "one of the great literary creations… like Hamlet, Don Quixote, Don Juan and Faust," together in an exceptional Everyman Library volume featuring the first editions in English of two more Dostoevsky works—The Gentle Maiden and The Landlady—each with the translation of Charles Hogarth, in original gilt-stamped cloth.
"The unerring accuracy of Dostoevsky's psychology of modern—and postmodern—man placed him far ahead of not only the artists but also the philosophers of his age. Dostoevsky may have explained that, too, better than anyone, when he scribbled to himself in one of his innumerable notebooks: 'They call me a psychologist. It is not true. I'm only a realist'" (Bloom, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 14). Letters from the Underworld, best known and cited herein as Notes from Underground, "lays out the basic social, moral-philosophical and religious positions that Dostoevsky will develop in the five great novels—Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Devils, Raw Youth and Brothers Karamazov. Notes from Underground, however, is not only an arresting and profound introduction to these works, but to the 20th century, which recognized as its own the problems of reason and irrationality, freedom and self-will, human dignity and degradation" (Robert L. Jackson, Introduction to 2009 edition).
"Dostoevsky's impact on the modern literary mind is unrivaled in its scope and vitality." In Notes from Underground, written in 1864 while his wife lay on her deathbed and published the same year, Dostoevsky's narrator is widely seen as "the symbol of modern man, as a precursor of Existentialist thought" (Matlaw in Introduction to 2003 edition). "Few works in modern literature are more widely read… or so often cited as a key text revelatory of the hidden depths of the sensibility of our time. The term 'underground man' has become part of the vocabulary of contemporary culture, and this character has now achieved—like Hamlet, Don Quixote, Don Juan and Faust—the stature of one of the great literary creations… He has thus entered into the very warp and woof of modern culture in a fashion testifying to the philosophical suggestiveness and hypnotic power of this first great creation of Dostoevsky's post-Siberian years" (Frank, Dostoevsky, 413). First edition. Containing the first appearance in English of Letters from the Underworld (i.e. Notes from Underground), first issued serially in Russian in 1864 in Dostoevsky's journal, Epokha (Epoch), which was edited by his brother Mikhail. Also with the first appearance in English of Dostoevsky's story, The Gentle Maiden, and his novella, The Landlady. Gentle Maiden first appearing in Russian in 1876 in Dostoevsky's Writer's Diary; Landlady first appearing in 1847 in Russian in the Russian literary magazine, Notes of the Fatherland. Each with the translation of Charles James Hogarth, who also translated Dostoevsky's Poor Folk for Everyman's Library. which was was founded in 1906 by Joseph Dent, who promised "infinite riches in a little room." Containing Hogarth's Introduction and his translation of the "Preface by the Author." Half title with Everyman's Library advertisement on the verso. Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English: A-L, 366.
Text fine, toning to bright gilt-stamped cloth. A handsome about-fine copy.