The Overcoat and Other Stories
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923. 1st US Edition. Octavo, publisher's olive cloth, spine stamped in yellow, top edge stained in yellow, original illustrated dust jacket.
"How little humane feeling after all was to be found in men's hearts." First US edition of this collection of short stories by the great 19th-century Russian-Ukrainian satirist, issued in Knopf’s Collected Works of Nikolay Gogol series translated by Constance Garnett. A literary masterpiece that deftly condenses the spirit of Russian culture, "The Overcoat" follows Akakii Akakiievich Bashmachkin, a downtrodden government clerk whose life is transformed when he purchases a new overcoat. A satirical critique of Russia’s ranking system and bureaucracy, the story is regarded for introducing realism into Russian literature, influencing Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin, leading Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé to famously claim, "We all came out from under Gogol's Overcoat." This collection also includes "The Carriage," "The Nevsky Prospect," "A Madman’s Diary," "The Prisoner," "The Nose," and "The Portrait." While it was translator Isabel Hapgood who first brought Gogol to American readers in the late-19th century, it was the prolific Garnett (responsible for translating over seventy masterworks of Russian literature throughout her career) who translated the entirety of his oeuvre into English, beginning with Dead Souls in 1922 and this volume in 1923. Book fine; unclipped dust jacket with lightest toning and rubbing. An uncommonly nice copy in the scarce original dust jacket. Item #11740
$1,800.00