SHEVCHENKO, Taras (1814–1861)

Kobzar: 1840–1940 [Kobzar]

Item #1628

367 pp. Frontispiece portrait of Shevchenko and illustrations throughout. 16 × 13 cm. Original publisher’s full green cloth, front cover lettered in gilt, gilt rules to spine. Binding firm and tight. Contents clean and crisp throughout, without ownership inscriptions, stamps, or annotations. A fine copy.

New York Ukrainian émigré reprint of the Prague 1940 centenary edition of Shevchenko’s Kobzar, issued by the Dnipro publishing house in 1953. The publisher’s statement expressly notes that the text was “reprinted without changes from the Prague edition of 1940.” The volume includes an introductory survey of Shevchenko’s life and work by the Ukrainian historian and statesman Dmytro Doroshenko; the text of Shevchenko’s poetry was checked against critical editions by Stepan Siropolko, who also collaborated with Doroshenko on the notes and survey of the literature. The selection and arrangement of the illustrations was prepared by V. Davydenko. The frontispiece reproduces Shevchenko’s 1840 oil self-portrait, while the additional illustrations include works by Shevchenko himself and by I. Izhakevych, P. Nosko, H. Hlyzovarov, F. Konovalenko, D. Eimer, and Mikhail Mikeshin.

The edition derives directly from the Prague publication prepared in 1940 to mark the centenary of the first appearance of Kobzar in St. Petersburg. Its republication in New York thirteen years later places the volume within the postwar Ukrainian émigré publishing tradition, through which prewar Ukrainian scholarly and literary editions were reproduced and circulated among displaced and diaspora communities. The publisher’s statement is particularly useful in documenting this continuity: rather than constituting a newly edited American edition, the 1953 Kobzar deliberately preserves the text and editorial apparatus of its Prague predecessor.

Price: $300.00