What's to be Done? A Romance
Boston: Benjamin R. Tucker, Publisher, 1886.
First English-language edition, scarce wrappered issue, published simultaneously with the cloth. [ii, author's portrait], 329, [5, adverts extending to verso of rear wrap] pp. Bound in publisher's tan decorative printed wraps. Near Fine with shallow chipping along edges of wraps (heaviest at head); front wrap starting at head, spotting to textblock edges, slight offsetting to tissue guard from frontispiece. An unsophisticated copy. Wraps are in excellent shape given their fragility and age. Written in 1862 while in a St. Petersburg prison awaiting transfer to Siberia, Russian nihilist Chernyshevsky wrote this fictional response to Turgenev's novel Father and Sons, which had just been published that same year. What's to Be Done's publication was a momentous event in Russian literary and political circles that resonated for decades; as literary scholar Joseph Frank stated, "Chernyshevsky's novel, far more than Marx's Capital, supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian Revolution." American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker translated and published this edition, beating Nathan Haskell Dole and S. S. Skidelsky's translation to market by a mere two days, as best this cataloguer could tell from contemporary newspaper ads and reviews. A highly influential work with themes of economic freedom that inspired generations of revolutionaries including Lenin, Kropotkin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Ayn Rand. Lenin would borrow the title for his epic political pamphlet, first published in 1901. Line, Ettlinger, & Gladstone p. 16.
Price: $12,000