Antologiia russkoi poezii XX stoletiia [An anthology of twentieth-century Russian poetry], complete in two volumes by Papoušková (Nadezhda F. Mel'nikova, born 1891), editor - 1920

1920. Prague: Nacha rech', 1920. Octavos (19.5 ×14 cm). Original printed wrappers in red and blue, with translucent protective covers; 70, [1] pp. and 123, [1] pp. Owner signature of the Russian-born American painter and graphic artist Louis Lozowick. Text evenly toned due to stock; some light underlining in pencil, else very good. A famous two-volume collection of poetry of the Russian Silver Age, published in Prague at the height of the Russian Civil war (1918-1922) when many Russian intellectuals were fleeing the Bolshevik regime and settling abroad. The two volumes include poems by the big names of Russian Symbolism such as Konstantin Balmont, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii and Zinaida Gippius who settled in Paris, as well as Vyacheslav Ivanov who settled in Rome. Other poets included in the collection, such as Andrei Bely, Alexander Blok and Anna Akhmatova initially supported the Bolshevik Revolution and chose to remain in Russia, later growing disillusioned with the regime and in the case of Akhmatova and Bely being barred from publication. Of those included in the collection, only Aleksei Tolstoy had a successful writing career in the Soviet Union writing mostly prose and science fiction. Both volumes include an introduction by émigré literary scholar and publisher Nadezhda Mel'nikova-Papoušková, reflecting on the current moment in Russian poetry.