[DOSTOEVSKY, FYODOR]. The Novels. London: William Heinemann, 1915-1923.
MIXED EDITIONS; volumes 1-11 (of 12), comprising volume 1: The Brothers Karamazov, 1923, new impression; volume 2: The Idiot, 1915, second impression; volume 3: The Possessed, 1920, third impression; volume 4: Crime and Punishment, 1916, second impression; volume 5: The House of the Dead, 1915, second impression; volume 6: The Insulted and Injured, 1915, first edition; volume 7: A Raw Youth, 1916, first edition; volume 8: The Eternal Husband, 1917, first edition; volume 9: The Gambler and Other Stories, 1917, first edition; volume 10: White Nights and Other Stories, [1918], first edition; volume 11: An Honest Thief and Other Stories, 1919, first edition. Cloth-bound, hardcovers, octavos (19 x 12.5 cm), pp. xii, 838; [4], 620; [8], 637; [4], 493; [6], 284; [4], 345; [4], 560; [6], 323, [16] publisher's catalogue; [6], 312; [6], 288; [6], 325, [2] publisher's advertisements. English text, translated by Constance Garnett. Bound in publisher's original red cloth, initial and terminal blanks, half-titles. Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay & Sons. Condition: GOOD. Bindings tight and secure. Spines faded with some marks to boards. Interiors well-preserved with some light toning. Without previous ownership markings.
Notes: This important near-complete set lacking only volume 12, The Friend of the Family (1920), comprising six first editions in English and five later impressions. Translated from the original Russian by Constance Garnett. Her popular Novels of Dostoevsky series, introduced the writer's works to many British readers for the first time. Through her further translations of Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Turgenev, Garnett was for much of the 20th-century English-speaking world the gateway into the treasures of Russian literature and her work remains in print today.
Constance Garnett (1861-1946) visited Moscow in 1894 and met with Tolstoy, who "praised her current translation [of his The Kingdom of God is Within You] and encouraged her to attempt others" (ODNB). Garnett's translations were also highly acclaimed by such writers as Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence, who, on a visit to her home in Kent, "watched rapt while she filled page after page" (ODNB).
