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CHUKOVSKY, Kornei [Nikolai Vasilievich Korneichuko

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Comprising: Leonid Andreev bolshoi i malenkii [Leonid Andreev Great and Small]. St. Petersburg: "Izdatelskoe Biuro," 1908. 136 pp. 8vo (215 x 145 mm). Rebound in half cloth over marbled boards. Condition: rear hinge cracked, original wrappers absent. An early mongraph on his friend, the Russian writer Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev (1871-1919), perhaps best remembered for his play He Who Gets Slapped (1915). Before he became a major children's book writer with the publication of Krokodil [Crocodile] in 1917, Chukovsky was an influential and often controversial literary critic. [With:] Ot Ckehova do nashikh dnei [From Chekhov to Our Day]. St. Petersburg: "Izdatelskoe Biuro," 1908. 244 pp. Rebound in black cloth with the original decorated wrappers bound in. Condition: wrappers repaired with slight thumbsoiling and small chip to back at lower corner. expanded second edition with a new preface. Essays on contemporary Russian writers including Chekhov, Balmont, Blok, Gorky, Kamenskii, Kuprin and Sologub. His caustic essay on novelist Mikhail Artsybashev (the father of artist Boris Artzybasheff) so offended the subject that he challenged Chukovsky to a duel. [And:] I. Nat Pinkerton i sovrennaya literatura. II. "Kuda my prishli?"[I. Nat Pinkerton and Contemporary Literature. II. "Where Are We Now?"]. Moscow: "Sovremennoe Tvorchestvo," 1910. 120 pp. 8vo (195 x 140 mm). Original tan wrappers. Condition: wrappers with some spotting and soiling, backstrip partially detached with slight chipping at middle, head and tail. The first essay discusses the influence of Nat Pinkerton, Sherlock Holmes and other detective stories that were enormously popular in Russia before the Revolution; the second is a survey of Russian literature in the year 1909. [And:] Litsa i maski [Faces and Masks]. St. Petersburg: "Shipovnik," [1914]. 355 pp. 8vo (215 x 155 mm). Rebound in rebacked dark blue boards with the original tan wrappers bound in. Condition: spotting to wrappers; bookseller stamp and pen markings to rear endpaper. Collection of essays on various literary subjects including Andreev, Oscar Wilde, the Russian Futurists, Jack London, Zaida Gippius, Aleksei Tolstoi and Boris Zaitsev. Chukovsky's sarcastic critque of the bestselling sentimental children's book writer Lidiya Charskaya first published in 1912 led to a severe drop in her sales. The relatively brief essay on the language of children (pp. 308-328) evolved over the years ino Chukovsky's major study Ot dvukh do pyati [From Two to Five] (1933). (4)

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