Lot 104A email save

[KRYLOV, Ivan Andreevich (1768-1844)]. [Basni [Fa

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[N.p.: ca. 1840]. 8 parts in one volume (as issued). 425 pp., 18mo (136 x 83 mm). Contemporary half calf over marbled paper-covered boards, spine gilt. Condition: lacking title-page and possible other preliminary leaves, tears to pp.189/190 and 261/262, some spotting or soiling. an early edition of the russian aesop. Krylov began translating the fables of Jean de La Fontaine in 1805; but soon, inspired by the call for the creation of a national literature, he started writing his own. He published his first collection in 1809. He continued to add to them over the years. The imperial family was impressed with his work and appointed him librarian in the St. Petersburg public library where he remained for thirty years. By the time of his death he had published nearly 200 fables in verse in eight volumes. Some of them comment on the Napoleonic Wars and some politically charged fables were not published until after his death. His Basni remains a Russian classic and many of his aphorisms are still quoted today. The very first line of Alexandre Pushkin's Eugene Onegin is a reworking of a line from Krylov. Not in Fekula.

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