DOSTOEVSKY, Fyodor; Lena MILMAN (translator); George MOORE (introduction). Poor Folk.

Dostoevsky for English Readers

DOSTOEVSKY, Fyodor; Lena MILMAN (translator); George MOORE (introduction). Poor Folk. London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane. 1894.

8vo. Original yellow cloth, design to upper board and Keynotes device by Beardsley to spine, untrimmed; pp. xx, 191, [1 (blank)], 14 (publisher’s catalogue), [2]; title-page printed in red and black, Beardsley’s cover design and Keynotes device repeated to title and p. v, respectively; slight soiling to boards (heavier to spine), front hinge tender; lettering to spine dulled; a very good copy.

First edition in English of Dostoevsky’s first novel, the third volume of the Keynotes series, instrumental in introducing Dostoevsky and his singular brand of naturalism to Anglophone readers.

Written to fund Dostoevsky’s gambling debts and first published in 1846, this epistolary novel following the tragic lives of two impoverished cousins was a huge success in Russia. The British were slow to see the attraction of his work, with Victorian novels favouring neat plots and clear moral frameworks.

The first appearance of Dostoevsky in English was Marie van Thilo’s liberal 1881 rendering of Dostoevsky’s Burned Alive, followed by Frederick Whishaw’s Crime and Punishment (1886), The Idiot (1887), and a handful of other novellas. Notably, The Brothers Karamazov would not be published in English until Constance Garnett’s translations began to appear in 1912, and it was only with the publication of Garnett’s twelve-volume Novels of Dostoevsky that the writer truly began to gain acceptance in Britain.

Milman’s (1862–1914) translation was significantly ahead of its time and received glowing contemporary reviews, The Times calling it a ‘most impressive and characteristic specimen of Russian fiction. Those to whom Russian is a sealed book will be duly grateful to the translator (who has acquitted herself excellently)’. She had encountered John Lane through her contributions to The Yellow Book, for which she produced a short story on Venice and a piece on Henry James.

She also corresponded extensively with George Moore (their letters published as George Moore in Transition: Letters to T. Fisher Unwin and Lena Milman, 1894–1910 (1968)), hence his introduction to this volume.

Gertner Zatlin 829; Samuels Lasner 27; Vallance 69.iii.

SKU: 2125437