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[WHITE GUARD – COMPLETE EDITION] Belaia gvardiia = The White Guard

Bulgakov, M.

Letchworth: Bradda Books, 1969. Item #2053

246 pp. 21,5x15,5 cm. In original cardboards. No dust jacket. Binding rubbed and soiled, tears of spine, traces of library stickers and marks occasionally, few small spots, underlines, water stains with text affected and small fragments lost on p. 53-56. Introduction in English (p. 3-8) lost. Handwritten notes in Russian on Bulgakov’s literary biography loosely inserted.

The second edition of the complete text in Russian published beyond Russia.

Trying to publish his first novel, ‘The White Guard’, Bulgakov faced many difficulties associated both with the Soviet system in general and with the lack of copyright in the early USSR. Some chapters were published in the magazine ‘Rossiia’ (1925, No. 4 and 5), after which the publisher moved abroad taking the manuscript with him. This marked the beginning of both 2 Parisian volumes, together representing the entire novel (1927 and 1929, different publishers) and the emergence of the Riga pirated edition with a false ending (1927). Bulgakov himself participated in the publishing of the second Parisian volume, providing authorized changes to the ending. The original manuscript hasn’t been preserved. In the early 1990s, an author’s typewritten ending of “The White Guard” was found – Bulgakov gave that fragment for No. 6 of the magazine “Rossiia” [unpublished] and never got it back.
The first Soviet complete edition of the novel was released by the author’s widow in 1966 – Bulgakov himself didn’t see the Soviet publication of the entire novel.

In 1969, ‘The White Guard’ was published in a series “Rarity Reprints” of Bradda Books in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. Since 1967, the publishing house released Russian works accompanied with introductions by European literary historians. The first English edition of ‘The White Guard’ came out in 1971.