Crane, Stephen
The Race of Youth. First Crane's Russian book.
The Race of Youth. First Crane's Russian book.
Crane, Stephen [The Race of Youth]. Beg Unosti.
Series Biblioteka Ogoniok, No 460.
Translation by N. Kamionskaia.
Preface by Ruth Kennel.
[Cover by K. Rotov].
Moskva, Ogoniok, 1929.
16mo, 40 pp.
In original wrappers.
In good condition, light overall wear, foxed.
The first appearance of any Crane’s fiction in Russian.
The book contains four short stories: 'The Pace of Youth', 'The Snake', 'Four Men in a Cave', and 'A Tent in Agony', which was Crane’s first magazine story (1892).
These stories were translated by the female translator Natalia Kamionskaia (1901-1997), who also translated books by John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, and Liam O'Flaherty.
The author of the preface Ruth E. Kennel arrived in Russia from the US in 1922. She worked as an editor, librarian, interpreter, and journalist for the American Nation. During Theodore Dreiser's visit to the USSR in 1927-1928, she served as his secretary, typing his journal and keeping her own diary about those days. For this book, she wrote a delicate and antimilitarist preface with several kind words about the author and his fiction.
The cartoon on the cover was prepared by Konstantin Rotov (1902-1959). This prominent Russian caricaturist was arrested in 1940 and held in prison until 1948, then in exile until 1954.
Libman, # 3100.
OCLC locates only one copy in the British library.