Books

8vo. Hardcover. Pp. 637. First UK Edition. A first printing of the English translation, by Constance Garnett. In very good condition, original scarlet cloth binding. A blind-stamped roundel on the front board, and the publisher's logo blind-stamped on the back board. The gilt on the spine has oxidised, and the boards have light marks and wear as expected with age and handling. A hint of cracking to the head and tail of the spine, also to be expected, with a small ink stain on the spine. Rear inner-hinge has started to split but the binding is still very tight and intact. Some foxing to the endpapers, and light foxing to the first and last few pages, but the interior pages are clean, with no significant creases or tears with the exception of a clean tear at the bottom of page 451 (though this does not obstruct the text). Light watermarks on book's fore-edge, and note the bottom of the pages are not cut. Published as Volume III of the Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, 'The Possessed' is an allegory of the potentially catastrophic consequences of the political and moral nihilism that were becoming prevalent in Russia in the 1860s. A fictional town descends into chaos as it becomes the focal point of an attempted revolution, orchestrated by master conspirator Pyotr Verkhovensky. Constance Clara Garnett was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian literature. She was the first English translator to render numerous volumes of Anton Chekhov's work into English and the first to translate almost all of Fyodor Dostoevsky's fiction into English.

Notes from Underground is a novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky that presents the interior monologue of a man living in St. Petersburg, Russia. The protagonist, often referred to as the underground man, retreats into a self-imposed isolation from society and articulates his world views through a series of contradictory and complex thoughts and ideas. The work is split into two parts, with the first titled 'Underground' and the second, 'A Propos of the Wet Snow.' It is often regarded as one of the first existentialist novels.