Stevenson, R.L.
The Pavilion on the Links. The only edition with illustrations by Mavrina.
The Pavilion on the Links. The only edition with illustrations by Mavrina.
Stevenson, R.L. [The Pavilion on the Links]. Pavil'on na Diunakh.
Series Biblioteka nauchnoi fantastiki i prikluchenii.
Translation and foreword by Iv. Kashkin.
Illustrations by T. Mavrina.
Moskva-Leningrad, Detgiz, 1946.
12mo, 79 pp., ill.
In original pictorial wrappers.
Near very good condition, very light wear to wrappers.
The first edition of this translation and the first edition of the novel in the new orthography. The only publication of these illustrations. Rare post-war edition, especially in this condition.
Ivan Kashkin (1899-1963) was one of the masters of the Soviet school of translation and a founder of literary translation in Russia. He translated works by James Joyce, Thomas Hardy, O. Henry, Gilbert Chesterton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Oscar Wilde, and was the first to introduce Russian readers to the books of Ernest Hemingway.
In the foreword, Kashkin cited poems by Stevenson from the collection 'A Child's Garden of Verses', translated by the prominent poet and leading figure of the Russian Symbolist movement, Valerii Briusov, and published in Moscow in 1920. These poems include 'The Land of Counterpane', 'Block City', and 'My Treasures'.
The cover and illustrations were crafted by Tatiana Lebedeva (1900/1902-1996), who is better known by her mother's surname, Mavrina, which she used as a pseudonym. She studied under Robert Falk at VKhUTEMAS and was a member of 'Group 13', a collective of graphic artists formed in 1929. Like many Russian avant-garde artists during the 1930s, Mavrina turned to illustrating children's books as a means of avoiding persecution under Stalin's regime. After World War II, she developed her distinctive and easily recognizable style, which combined the traditions of Russian primitivism with the painterly techniques of the early twentieth century. Her illustrations of Russian folktales have since become classics. In 1976, Mavrina became the first Russian artist to win the Hans Christian Andersen Award for her illustrations of children's books.
OCLC locates only one copy of this edition: in the University of California Library.