Books

First edition in English of Tolstoy's masterpiece with all the points of the first issue: sheets bulk to 35 mm, floral patterned endpapers, "13 Astor Place" on the title page, no front adverts, and 5 pp. of rear adverts not listing Russian titles. Octavo, original cloth, with gilt titles and tooling to the spine and front panel, patterned endpapers. Introduction and translated by Nathan Haskell Dole. In very good condition. Housed in a custom half-morocco clamshell box made by the Harcourt Bindery. Vladimir Nabokov called Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina "one of the greatest love stories in world literature." Matthew Arnold claimed it was not so much a work of art as "a piece of life." Set in imperial Russia, Anna Karenina is a rich and complex meditation on passionate love and disastrous infidelity. First issued serially in 1873; first published in book form in Moscow in 1878. Upon first reading it, Dostoyevsky wrote: "Anna Karenina is sheer perfection as a work of art. No European work of fiction of our present day comes anywhere near it."

Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in book form in 1878. Many authors consider Anna Karenina the greatest work of literature ever written, and Tolstoy himself called it his first true novel. It deals with themes of betrayal, faith, family, marriage, Imperial Russian society, desire, and rural vs. city life. The complex novel unfolds against the backdrop of 19th-century Russian high society and tells the tragic story of a married aristocrat and her affair with the affluent Count Vronsky. The novel explores a diverse range of topics throughout its pages and profoundly influences the genres of realist and romantic fiction.