the first of Akhmatova's works to be published after the death of Stalin.

Akhmatova (1889–1966) was one of the legendary figures of modern Russian poetry. Her life was one of great achievement and great loss. Her first husband, Nikolay Gumilev, was executed, her second husband, Nikolay Punin, died in the Gulag and her son Lev was also sent to the labour camps. Being one of her country's great lyric poets, she wrote first hand and movingly about Stalin's terror. While fellow poets and artists adored her, she was spied on by the state and finally expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers. She survived to become one of the century's most eloquent witnesses to the Soviet nightmare and was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in 1965.

8vo (170 x 115 mm); 132 pp., ink annotation in English to upper flyleaf, 'Printed in USSR' stamp to title, errata slip bound in at end; original maroon cloth, gilt lettering to upper cover; very slightly rubbed at the spine extremities, a very good copy.