Bookvica

[AMATEUR THEATRE] Bezumnaia Iul’ka [i.e. The Mad Iul’ka]

Kiselevskiy, Yan

Item #2515

Moscow: Lithography of theatre library of S.F.Razsokhin, 1906. 95 p. 27,1×18 cm. Contemporary cloth binding. Very good condition.

An interesting example of the play, likely printed in few dozen copies for the amateur theatre – the printing method used is similar to the editions of student lectures at the time, produced by the students and distributed among the classmates, who didn’t attend the full course. In this case the publisher Sergei Razsokhin (1851–1929) is known to produce this type of cheap lithographic editions since 1880s. For this type of editions, as they have never entered the wide audience, it was easier to receive the censor’s approval. Also, a lot of the time the translations were done by the contractors to ’Teatral’naia biblioteka’ with little regard to copyright. As a result the amateur theatre (also known as ’Narodniy teatr’) was able to perform a wide variety of plays, that they could borrow form ‘biblioteka’ and return after the performance was concluded.
In this particular case the transition from polish playwright Ian Kiselevsky is interesting not only because the play has not been published in a book form (Russian State Library catalogue doesn’t know about the existence of this translation in seems), but also for the language used by the translator: for example, we can see the rare example of pre-1917 usage of the word ‘burzhui’ in his work.

Rare as all editions of ’Teatral’naia biblioteka’.

Price: $450.00