Bednaia Nevesta. [The Poor Bride].

Very good copy of this rare early play by one of the leading Russian playwrights of the XIX century.

Deemed by literary historians to be the founder of Russian national drama, Aleksandr Ostrovsky (1823-86) belonged to the school of realism that also counted Tolstoi and Turgenev among its members, but chose the play rather than the novel as his medium. He is particularly known for his depiction of ordinary merchants, government bureaucrats and other middle-class denizens of Moscow and the Volga River region.

The Poor Bride, Ostrovsky's second play, was first published in the literary magazine 'The Muscovite' (edited by Mikhail Pogodin) earlier in 1852. The literary critic Victor Terras writes of this work, The Poor Bride realistically shows the unfortunate position of women in Ostrovsky's time, whose only hope of economic security was in marrying for money, not love. Though at moments the author parodies the romantic archetype, he states no thesis, but merely implies one in the relentless realism characteristic of both his first plays.' Initially banned for production by the censor, The Poor Bride eventually became one of the author's first plays to be staged, at the Maliy Theatre, Moscow, in 1853. From then until Ostrovsky's death, not a year went by without a new play of his appearing onstage somewhere in the Russian Empire.

First edition; large 8vo. pp. 128 including title; some light spotting and staining. Russian contemporary quarter sheep, marbled paper boards; minor repairs to spine.

Not in Kilgour or Smirnov-Sok., Biblioteka. OCLC records only 6 locations (University of Melbourne, LoC, Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina and Columbia).