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[ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHEREMNYKH] Jimmie Higgins

Sinclaire, U.

Moscow: Krasnaya nov’, 1922. Item #1382

242 pp.: ill., 8 ills. 26,5x17 cm. In original publisher’s illustrated wrappers by Mikhail Cheremnykh. Restored, tears and soiling of the covers, otherwise very good and clean internally.

Scarce. Third edition. The first and second editions were also translated by Mikhail Diakonov and published in 1921 and 1922, respectively. The 1922 edition was also illustrated by Mikhail Cheremnykh (1890-1962).
The first appearance in print of the canonical suite of illustrations by Cheremnykh.
The edition features remarkable black and white drawings and full-page color plates by Mikhail Cheremnykh, a Russian caricaturist, political cartoonist, oil painter, stage designer, book illustrator, and propaganda poster designer. In 1911, Cheremnykh moved from Siberia to Moscow to study under the guidance of the avant-garde painter Ilya Mashkov (1881-1944). Between 1911 and 1917, Mikhail took courses at the School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in Moscow. From 1919 to 1922, he worked for the news agency ROSTA, creating over 500 posters and cartoons that glorified the new Communist regime. He was also co-founder of the satirical magazine Krokodil [i.e. A Crocodile]. As a book illustrator, Cheremnykh livened up stories by M. Saltykov Shchedrin and worked as a stage artist for A. Pashchenko’s Madame de Pompadour, produced by the Malyi Opera Theater in Leningrad. In 1942, Cheremnykh received the USSR State Prize and Stalin Prize, and in 1952 he was awarded the title of People’s Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
The novel was translated into Russian by the Soviet writer and translator Mikhail Diakonov (1885-1938). A member of the Soviet trade delegation to Norway in the 1920s, Diakonov also translated William Thackeray’s works and was the author of a number of popular travel books in the Arctic. In 1938, the author was arrested for espionage and shot, to be rehabilitated in 1956.
A lifelong vigorous socialist, Upton Sinclair was one of the most beloved American novelists in the USSR. His works were translated multiple times, and the author was largely considered a dearest friend of the Soviet regime.

Worldcat shows 1 copy of the edition at Indiana University.

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