The Poems, Prose and Plays of Alexander Pushkin by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837) edited by Avrahm Yarmolinsky - 1936

vii-[8]-896 pages. Octavo (8" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's green cloth with black label with gilt lettering in original pictorial jacket. Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Critics consider many of his works masterpieces, such as the poem The Bronze Horseman and the drama The Stone Guest, a tale of the fall of Don Juan. His poetic short drama Mozart and Salieri (like The Stone Guest, one of the so-called four Little Tragedies, a collective characterization by Pushkin himself in 1830 letter to Pyotr Pletnyov) was the inspiration for Peter Shaffer's Amadeus as well as providing the libretto (almost verbatim) to Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Mozart and Salieri. Pushkin is also known for his short stories. In particular his cycle The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin, including "The Shot", were well received. Pushkin himself preferred his verse novel Eugene Onegin, which he wrote over the course of his life and which, starting a tradition of great Russian novels, follows a few central characters but varies widely in tone and focus. Onegin is a work of such complexity that, though it is only about a hundred pages long, translator Vladimir Nabokov needed two full volumes of material to fully render its meaning in English. Because of this difficulty in translation, Pushkin's verse remains largely unknown to English readers. Even so, Pushkin has profoundly influenced western writers like Henry James. Condition: Previous owner's name to front end paper, tick marks to content pages, spine ends rubbed. Jacket with rubbing to hings, fold over edges and spine ends, spine head chipped else better than good in about very good jacket.