The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917.
First American edition, first printing. [vi], 300, [10] pp. with eight advertising pages at rear. Bound in publisher's dark green cloth stamped in blind and lettered in gilt. Very Good with dulling to spine gilt, moderate wear to extremities, and dampstain to upper front board and textblock edge. Pencil ownership signature to front free endpaper, ink line to margin of p. 26, and light toning to contents. Overopened throughout, faint dampstain to upper gutter throughout, affecting text of first half and thereafter limited to margin. Meister 430.
The indefatigable Contance Garnett translated around 70 volumes from Russian, which she learned from political exiles in the United Kingdom. She brought the English-speaking world's attention to Dostoevsky and Chekhov, then famous in their mother country but little-known outside it. Her decision to sacrifice strict accuracy for readability has been a source of controversy for decades, but therein lies her appeal — Hemingway told a friend that he was unable to get through War and Peace "until I got the Constance Garnett translation."
Garnett's translation of the stories collected in The Lady with the Dog, the third of her landmark eleven-volume series of his works, was published in London by Chatto & Windus in 1917 and by Macmillan in New York shortly thereafter. Chekhov's popularity in the United States grew with each new volume. The San Francisco Chronicle declared:
"Chekhov may not be for the tired business man — at least, not for the variety that finds rest only in the inanities — but not to know him is to be ignorant of a great writer....Some of these stories leave the reader very suddenly, having fascinated rather than delighted him, but always there is the consciousness of the presence of the master mind."
Price: $1,250