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Shakespeare, William

The Tragedy of Hamlet. Signed and inscribed by Anna Radlova to her prominent sister, female sculptor

The Tragedy of Hamlet. Signed and inscribed by Anna Radlova to her prominent sister, female sculptor

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English literature / Signed / Translations / William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare, William [The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark]. Gamlet: Prints Datskii.

Translation by A. Radlova. Preface by K. Derzhavin.
Afterword by M. Morozov.
Designed by V. Kozlinskiy.

Moskva, Iskusstvo, 1937.
12mo, XIV, [1], 253, [2] pp.

In publisher’s boards. Signed and inscribed to front free endpaper.
Spine is lost, worn to edges, small cracks to edges.

Signed and inscribed by the translator: 'Dorogoi moei Sarushke / ot Annushki. / 20-X-37' [To my dear Sarushka from Annushka. October 20, 1937]. First edition of this translation. One of 10 000 copies published.

Anna Radlova (1891–1949), a poet, literary salon-holder, and wife of Sergei Radlov, the theatre director, prepared the translation of this book. Her Shakespeare translations of 'Romeo and Juliet' (1933), 'Othello' (1935), and 'Hamlet' (1937) were highly popular in the early 1930s and were used in the theatre productions by her husband in the Leningrad Malyi Theater. Radlova’s translations were considered innovative and precise, and Boris Pasternak, the next translator of 'Hamlet', admired her work for its authenticity. During World War II, Anna and her husband were evacuated from Leningrad to the North Caucasus and later ended up in Germany. In 1945 after returning they were accused of treason. Anna Radlova died in a GULAG.
She signed this book to her younger sister, the well-known sculptor and ceramist Sarra Lebedeva (1892–1967), who taught at the Free Art Studios and the Steiglitz Institute in Petrograd. Lebedeva was acquainted with many famous figures, including Tatlin, Malevich, Altman, Gorky, Blok, Mayakovsky, Meyerhold, and others. She is known for her portrait sculptures of Felix Dzerzhinsky, Vera Mukhina, Aleksandr Tvardovsky, Vsevolod Ivanov, among others. Lebedeva also created the profile image of Boris Pasternak, a lifelong friend, which graces his grave marker at Peredelkino.

OCLC locates one copy of this edition only: in the University of Cambridge Library.

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