A London edition of Hapgood's translation was published in 1887. Zakharchenko's conclusion, translated from Charrière's French edition.

An English translation of Part I of the novel was published in 1854 under the title Home Life in Russia, but is 'an adaptation… with an altered ending' (Line, 19). Tragically, Gogol burned the draft of the second volume only ten days before his death in 1852. What remains is only a disjointed fragment' (Hornstein, 221). Convinced of the sinfulness of his creative work, he destroyed the manuscripts of the second part of Dead Souls. In 1848, after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he felt confirmed in his belief that he was eternally damned. In response to the success of Dead Souls, Gogol began work on a second volume, and 'while working on this continuation he began to show signs of religious obsession.

A satirical story of bureaucracy and serfdom, the novel was extremely popular, as it was interpreted as an obvious condemnation of feudalism. Housed in a custom clamshell box.įirst edition of the first complete English translation of the Russian novelist’s unfinished masterwork, “the first novel from which the world began to form its ideas of 19th-century Russia” (Hornstein, 139).įirst published in 1842 in Russian, Gogol's Dead Souls is now widely regarded as the foundation of the Realist movement in Russia. Octavo, original burgundy cloth gilt, patterned endpapers. THE FIRST COMPLETE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF GOGOL’S DEAD SOULS, 1886

Novel dead souls