Footnotes

HERZEN'S ʻTALE OF TWO SHORES' TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH FOR THE FIRST TIME. This appears to be the first translation into English of this work by Alexander Herzen, the radical Russian exile and 'father of Russian socialism' (of whom Tolstoy said he had never met a man 'with so rare a combination of scintillating brilliance and depth' and who appears as the central character in Tom Stoppard's trilogy The Coast of Utopia). His great analysis of the European revolutions of 1848 was first published in Hamburg in 1850 as Von anderen Ufer; while a French edition, De l'autre rive, edited by his son from the Russian manuscript, appeared in Geneva in 1870. Our translation by Lady Strachey is taken from the French edition, and includes Herzen's dedication to his son, Alexander. It has every appearance of being unpublished: Isaiah Berlin, introducing the 1956 English translation by Moura Budberg, entitled From the Other Shore, wrote that it was 'as far as I know, here translated for the first time into English'.

Lady Strachey, née Jane Maria Grant, was mother of Lytton and James: ʻShe was tall and rather stately in appearance, and dressed in unconventional clothes which she designed herself. She was the centre of a household which was always busy with a stream of scientific, artistic, and politically active friends, and her ten noisy children, for whom she was intensely ambitious. She was a disciple of John Stuart Mill and an ardent feminist... Lady Strachey enjoyed literature and encouraged her children to read widely, to write, and to act. She was a minor author, publishing two books for children (1887 and 1893) and Poets on Poets in 1894... Among her literary friends was George Eliot, whose letters to Lady Strachey show the warmth of their friendship' (R. H. Vetch, rev. Elizabeth Baigent, ODNB).

Included in the lot are printed editions of Vom anderen Ufer (Hamburg, 1850) and De l'autre rive (1870[71]), both worn, covers detached, etc., the latter with annotations in ink. Also included are printed programmes for an evening of Lady Strachey's readings in the Studio of the late Lord Leighton to raise funds to purchase Lord Leighton's Clytemnestra for the Nation, and a Lyceum Club Dinner in her honour.