Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich (1818  - 1883)	Ottsy i dieti. Leipzig, Wolfgang Gerhard tsentral´nyi magazin dlia slvaianskikh stran, 1869. 374 p.	€1750,00

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8vo, 3/4 leather binding of the period with gilt lettering 'Turgeniev.Otzy i djeti' on spine. VERY GOOD. Extremely rare. FIRST EDITION IN THIS FORMAT. This edition differs from first edition printed in Russia in 1862, where the imprint 'Posviashchaetsia pamiati Vissariona Bielinskago' was banned by censor. During the period of 1853-62 Turgenev wrote some of his finest stories as well as the first four of his novels: Rudin(1856), A Nest of the Gentry (1859), On the Eve (1860) and Fathers and Sons (1862). Themes involved in these works include: beauty of early love, failure to reach one's dreams, and frustrated love. Fathers and Sons, Turgenev's most famous and enduring novel, appeared in 1862. Its leading character, Eugene Bazarov, considered the 'first Bolshevik' in Russian literature, was in turn heralded and reviled as either a glorification or a parody of the 'new men' of the 1860s. The novel examined the conflict between the older generation, reluctant to accept reforms, and the nihilistic youth. In the central character, Bazarov, Turgenev drew a classical portrait of the mid-nineteenth-century nihilist. Fathers and Sons was set during the six-year period of social ferment, from Russia's defeat in the Crimean War to the Emancipation of the Serfs. Hostile reaction to Fathers and Sons prompted Turgenev's decision to leave Russia. As a consequence he also lost the majority of his readers. Many radical critics at the time (with the notable exception of Dimitri Pisarev) did not take Fathers and Sons seriously; and, after the relative critical failure of his masterpiece, Turgenev was disillusioned and started to write less. Swedish owner´s inscription, dated 1876 on verso of back cover. No copy in: Belinsky Museum in Chembar (Belinskii, Russia), not in 'new' Ivan S.Turgenev Museum, Moscow or Ivan Turgenev Library in Paris. See: Mikhailovskii, N. Turgenev, ego tridtsatiletniia literaturnaia deiatel´nost´ i ego tipy. Voroneszh, 1872, p.79 - 86.