£1,200
FIRST GERMAN EDITION, 8vo, pp. [3]-253, [1]. Original red boards, front board blocked centrally in blind, spine lettered in black. Poor-quality paper a little toned. Spine slightly cocked, some rubbing to extremities. Ownership inscription of W.H. Brawn[?] to flyleaf, dated 1/11/38.
The rare boards issue of the first translation of any of Nabokov's writings, a German version of his first novel, initially published in Russian two years earlier as Машенька (Mashenka) under the name V. Sirin, and here translated by Jakob Margot Schubert and G. Jarcho. Nabokov's earliest publications were written in Russian while he was (unhappily) living in Berlin and he pointedly neglected to develop any fluency in the German language. The publisher of this edition, Ullstein Verlag, also produced the Russian emigre newspaper Rul, which Nabokov's father had edited, and the German-language newspaper that serialised this text prior to the book-form publication.
The book was published as part of the series of affordable literary texts 'Die gelben Ullstein-Bücher', which ran from 1927 to 1933, and like its series-mates is normally found in yellow pictorial wrappers. Ullstein was the largest of the Jewish-owned publishers at the time, and was forcibly 'Aryanised' from 1934, the Jewish name Ullstein being removed in 1937 and replaced with 'Deutscher'; at the same time the Ullstein-Bücher series was renamed Uhlen-Bücher, reflecting the company's owl logo. This boards issue has the owl logo with the later name blocked on the front board, while the title-page retains the Ullstein imprint - suggesting it was probably issued around a decade after being printed (a conjecture the ownership inscription here supports).
Mashenka would not be translated into English until 1970, by Nabokov in collaboration with Michael Glenny; a second German translation followed by Klaus Birkenhauer in 1976. This original version is scarce in any binding, with the NLS holding the only copy in Britain recorded in Worldcat.
