Russian Antiquarian Books The 36th Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair November 14-16, 2014 Pavel Chepyzhov is an antiquarian bookseller based in Moscow. He is a member of ILAB and the Russian Guild of Antiquarian Booksellers. As this is only his second appearance at a western fair, he hopes you will forgive any flaws in this catalog and concentrate on the books themselves. The idea of BOOKVICA is to present Russian books in all their magnificent variety to the western world. Hence the range of this catalog, which spans Soviet agitprop to the Old Slavonic printed books and manuscripts (e.g. pp. 37-42). Yet the main highlight of this catalog is Russian science and the history of thought. It opens with books by Russian Nobel Laureates (from Mechnikov to Kapitsa) (pp. 3-6). Earlier works of science can be found in the second section (Sechenov, Mendeleev and Bunyakovsky) (pp. 7-13). It is hard to imagine a world untouched by their ideas. We also present a bountiful selection of books on Russian thought, most of them focusing on the history of Marxism (pp. 15-21). Many are well-known in the West, such as What is to be done? by Chernyshevsky, whilst others remain undeservedly obscure, such as books like the ground-breaking work by Bervi-Flerovsky that encouraged Marx to learn Russian. In our catalog you will find among Russian classics, two of the most well-known Russian novels: War and Peace and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (the first edition and first appearance in print respectively) (pp. 23-26). Although the main aim of this catalog is to reflect Russian thought, science and culture, it also offers good examples of the reception of American and British classics in Russia, such as the first translations of Salinger, Joyce and Harper Lee, and also some material very rare in the West, for example the first Armenian translation of Much Ado About Nothing and American classics translated into Georgian (pp. 27-33). Our next fair will be the New York Antiquarian Bookfair in April 2015. Cover design: detail from the rear decoration of [33] Kannonik (p. 37). Inside back cover: title-page for the first edition of [17] War and Peace. Back cover: Stenberg’s cover design for Gorin’s book on [35] the Kamerny Theater. 2 I. RUSSIAN NOBEL LAUREATES [1] [MECHNIKOV ON THE book, originally published in IMMUNE SYSTEM] French. MECHNIKOV, Ilya. This edition is rare, Nevospriimchivost’ k infekcionnim especially in original wrappers. boleznyam. [i.e. Immunity in Infectious Diseases]. St * Petersburg: K.L. Rikker, 1903. [4], II, 604, VII pp. 8vo. Original [2] [RUSSIAN NOBEL PRIZE IN wrappers. Good condition. The CHEMISTRY] spine is carefully restored. SEMENOV, N.N. Tsepnyie reaksii Owner’s pre-revolutionary stamp [Chain reactions]. Leningrad: on the title. The first Russian Goshimtechizdat, 1934. 555 pp. + edition. leaf of misprints. 4200 copies printed. Original publisher’s Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (1845- cloth. Very good condition. Few 1916), the celebrated Russian marks in ink on the front biologist, was the second Russian endpaper and a number in ink on Nobel Laureate. He was awarded the title-page. the prize for his work on Very rare. immunity. Mechnikov discovered and described phagocytosis – the This is the magnum opus of phenomenon that is pivotal for one of the brightest minds of the modern understanding of Russian science in the XXth- immunity. century – the celebrated Mechnikov only wrote three physicist and chemist, Nikolay major books in his lifetime – two Semenov. The English translation of them, The Nature of Man, and (Chemical Kinetics and Chain The Prolongation of Life: Reactions) followed the next year Optimistic Studies are works of and became the classic reference social philosophy. This is the main book of chemical physics. book on biology by him. He Semenov discovered an combined all of his studies and entirely new chemical process – discoveries in the field in this one branched chain reactions – 3 describing their kinetic properties. [3] [THE ONLY RUSSIAN NOBEL His theoretical models anticipated LAUREATE IN ECONOMICS] the discovery of nuclear chain Smirnov, Krilov, KANTOROVICH. reactions. Variatsionnoe ischeslenie. In 1926-27, Semenov [Calculus of variations]. observed in his laboratory sudden Leningrad.: Kubuch, 1933. 204 pp. changes from virtual inactivity to 5200 copies printed. Original card great intensifications in chemical boards. Very good condition. reaction brought about by only slight changes in conditions. To The first appearance of explain this phenomenon, in 1930 Kantorovich in book form -34 he developed the theory of (chapters I, IV, V were written by branched chain reactions. him). Semenov’s model was sufficiently Leonid Kantorovich (1912- general to explain many common 1986) is best known as the only characteristics of chain processes Russian economist to become a even without an identification of Nobel Laureate. This book was the precise nature of the active printed 42 years before the prize centers. was given to him – at a time Academician, A. F. Ioffe, when, as an impressive young noted in 1932 that Semenov’s mathematician, he was fast studies of chain reactions “have making his way to the top of his revised the classic study of rates field. Aged 22, the year after this of chemical reactions, [and they book was published, he became a supply the] basis of a new full professor at Leningrad kinetics.” In 1956, Semenov University – one of the leading became the first Soviet scientist Soviet institutions of the time – to be awarded a Nobel Prize in having that year been granted a Chemistry. PhD in mathematics without presenting any paper. The present book is an anthology of lectures for university students – young Kantorovich shared the 4 authorship with very good condition: the only tear is at distinguished professors of the the bottom of the front. University – Vladimir Smirnov, the Generally good condition. creator of the most popular First Edition. course on Higher Mathematics in the pre-War Soviet Union, and Pyotr Kapitsa (1894-1984) Professor Vitaly Krylov. was a celebrated Russian Kantorovich started to work physicist who was awarded the on economic problems after Nobel Prize for Physics (1978) for World War II. He adapted his discoveries in low- mathematic formulae temperature physics. He began considerably to refine the theory his career at Cambridge working of the optimum allocation of with Ernest Rutherford. He soon resources and it was in earned a reputation and a special recognition of this contribution laboratory in Cambridge was built that he became the first and only for him to conduct his Russian Nobel Prize Laureate in experiments. In 1934, he Economics. returned to Russia to visit his The book is in very good parents and was refused a visa to condition for a book of lectures. go back to England. Kapitsa thus became one of the Soviet Union’s * talents who would “improve physical science in his own [4] [THE MOST INFLUENTIAL country”. RUSSIAN PHYSICIST] Between 1934 and his death KAPITSA, Pyotr Leonidovich. in 1984, Kapitsa opposed his own Eksperiment, teoriya, praktika: government: he wrote numerous stat’i i vystupleniya [i.e. letters of complaint to all the Experiment, theory, practice: party leaders including Stalin; he articles and speeches]. Moscow: criticized the Secret Service for Nauka, 1974. 287 pp., 1 portrait, arresting scientists (and famously 22x14 cm. The book was saved the Nobel Laureate, Lev designed by S. Verkhovsky. The Landau, from the Gulag). He dust-wrapper is present and in never became a member of the 5 Communist Party, the only Fellow suggests a scientific approach, of the Presidium of the Soviet but it is aimed at a general Academy of Science without a reader, exploring the difference Party membership-card. between theory and practice in This is the best-known book Soviet life in general. by Kapitsa, the compilation he The first English edition made of his greatest appeared in 1980. The book has achievements. It explains his gone through five editions in major discoveries in a simple Russia and remains one of the language, his social position, his best-known Physics books for a outlook and his general general audience. philosophy. The title of the book 6 II. SCIENCE [5] [FIRST RUSSIAN BOOK ON descent. He got his Bachelor PROBABILITY] degree from the Sorbonne in BUNYAKOVSKY, V. Osnovania France where he read the latest matematicheskoy teorii works on the theory of veroyatnostey [i.e. Foundations of probability before returning to St the Mathematical heorT y of Petersburg. The Department of Probability]. St Petersburg: v Probability Theory was created at tipografii Imperatorskoy Akademii St Petersburg University as early Nauk, 1846. [4], XVII, [3], 478, [2] as 1830, and Viktor Bunyakovsky pp. 1 table + Memoires De became the first Head of the L'Acadedemie Des Sciences De St. Department. In writing this book, -Petersbourg, VII serie. T. 1, № 5. Bunyakovsky wanted to adapt Tchebychef. Sur L'interpolation Laplace’s theory for a general Dans Le Cas D'un Grand Nombre audience – because the classic De Donnees Fournies Par Les study, Le Theorie Analitique des Observations [i.e. On the Probabilites (1812) was Interpolation in the Case of Grand “intelligible only for a few Number of Data Provided By readers”. Here, Bunyakovsky Observation] St Petersburg, 1859. developed Russian terminology [2], 81 pp. 4to. Crossed owner’s for the theory of Probability, stamp on p. I, title-page, p. 3 of much of which is still used today. the supplement, foxing. According to O. Sheynin, Contemporary quarter-leather. Bunyakovsky transferred the Spine and edges of the boards analytical theory of Probability to rubbed, a piece of spine missing Applied Mathematics. He also from the top. Foxing throughout. connected the theory with First edition. Rare.