[Pasternak, Boris] [Notes on Translations of Shakespeare's Plays]. Zametki k Perevodam Shekspirovskikh Dram. Typescript. 

N.p., [1949].
8vo, [2], 20 l.

In handmade wrappers, bound with threads.
In good condition, front cover detached but present, rubbed, some sunning to covers, with chipping to wrapper edges. 

A typescript on Pasternak’s translations of Shakespeare, from the collection of the illegitimate daughter of Grand Duke Nicholas Konstantinovich of Russia. First copy.

Although the author is not named in this early typescript, it is an essay by Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) on his translations of Shakespeare’s plays. 
Pasternak is known to have written the first version of these notes in late May and June of 1946, originally intended as a preface to the forthcoming edition of 'Vil’iam Shekspir v perevode Borisa Pasternaka' ('William Shakespeare as Translated by Boris Pasternak'), which was being prepared for publication by 'Iskusstvo' publishing house. The essay was also submitted to the literary journal 'Zvezda', but following the Central Committee’s August 1946 resolution 'On the Journals Zvezda and Leningrad', it was never published there. Furthermore, it was not included as a preface in the two-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays in Pasternak’s translation, published in 1949–1950, for which it was originally written.
Interestingly, an abridged English version of Pasternak’s notes, titled 'Some Remarks by a Translator of Shakespeare' but published anonymously, appeared in 1946 in issue no. 9 of the Moscow-based international journal 'Soviet Literature', which was intended for a foreign readership. Subsequently, Pasternak translated ‘King Lear’ and ‘Macbeth’, adding reflections on these works to his essay. The Russian text was published in 1956, a slightly shortened and edited version, appeared in the anthology ‘Literaturnaia Moskva’ (‘Literary Moscow’). The complete version of the notes was published only in 1983 in the book 'Vozdushnye Puti: Proza raznykh let' ('Air Routes: Prose from Different Years’).
This typescript comes from the archive of Daria (Darya) Chasovitina (1896–1966), the illegitimate daughter of Grand Duke Nicholas Konstantinovich of Russia, a grandson of Nicholas I. She was born in Tashkent (now Uzbekistan) as the result of a liaison between the Grand Duke and the daughter of a local Cossack, during his exile following a scandal involving the theft of three valuable diamonds from the revetment of a cherished family icon. Before the October Revolution, Daria studied violin, training in both Norway and Saint Petersburg under the renowned Hungarian violinist Leopold Auer. She was later associated with the Russian Anthroposophical Society. Following the onset of repressions against its members and her own interrogation by a GPU agent, she acquired a typewriter and supported herself through typing work. Daria is known to have collaborated with the poet and translator Sophia Parnok, the writer Marietta Shaginyan, and even Andrei Platonov. A lesser-known detail of her life is that she also maintained contact with Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In 1946, she was among the small circle of individuals who attended one of the first readings of the early chapters of Pasternak’s 'Doctor Zhivago'.
It is highly likely that she made this copy of Pasternak's notes herself from the author's original manuscript, which was completed in 1949 (at that time, Pasternak added the chapter on 'King Lear').