[SOVIET LEADING STUDY ON CHAPLIN'S FILMS] Charl'z Spenser Chaplin: Ocherk rannego perioda tvorchestva [i.e. Charles Spencer Chaplin: A Sketch of the Early Period of Activity]

Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1959. 266, [1] pp.: ill., 1 portrait. 27x21 cm. In original cloth with lettering on the front cover and spine. No dust jacket. Slightly rubbed, otherwise very good.

First and only edition. A foreword by notable film critic Rostislav Yurenev.

Book design was produced by a designer Nikolai Sedel'nikov (1905-1994). Graduated from VKHUTEMAS, he primarily worked as a master of type design and photomontage compositions. Sedel'nikov illustrated this book with numerous film stills and stacked them along the outer margins, hinting at film shots.

This is a monograph by a leading Soviet specialist of Chaplin's early acting, Georgii Avenarius (1903-1958). He was one of the pioneering film historians in the USSR, an actor of Ukrainian silent films and camera operator. He was interested in Chaplin since the 1930s, at that time he published an article on Chaplin's acting (Radians'ke Kino, 1936, #8), then wrote a range of other articles and finally presented the monograph. This 1957 dissertation of Chaplin's early acting was published in two years after submission, containing five chapters, bibliography and filmography up to 1923. The volume of further Chaplin's activity was never published because of Avenarius' death.

Analyzed movies were included with numbered frame recording that was written on the base of copies at the State Film Fund. Occasionally originally text frames from films are given.

Worldcat shows copies in LoC, Princeton, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin, Northwestern Universities, etc.