Fyodor Dostoyevsky Aubrey Beardsley 1st Ed 1894 Poor Folk Epistolary Novel HC

Up For Sale Today is

Poor Folk

by

F. Dostoievsky 
[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]
Translated from the Russian by Lena Milman with an Introduction by George Moore

Hardcover. 8vo. Published by Roberts Brothers, Boston, MA. 1894  xvi, 187 pgs. 16 pp publisher's ads rear. IIlustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. First Edition/First Printing.

Bound in publisher's light blue cloth with black stamping to front board, gilt lettering to spine. Bound in cloth boards with titles present to the spine and front board. Boards have shelf-wear present to the extremities (boards are sunned along the spine). Previous owner's name present to the front pastedown. Large piece missing from the half-title page. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid.

First published in 1846, this is the great Russian writer's first book. Poor Folk is an epistolary novel -- that is, a tale told as a series of letters between the characters. And oh, what characters these are! Makar Dievushkin Alexievitch is a copy writer, barely squeaking by; Barbara Dobroselova Alexievna works as a seamstress, and both face the sort of everyday humiliation society puts upon the poor. These are people respected by no one, not even by themselves. These are folks too poor, in their circumstances, to marry; the love between them is a chaste and proper thing, a love that brings some readers to tears. But it isn't maudlin, either; Fyodor Dostoevsky has something profound to say about these people and this circumstance. And he says it very well.