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Pasternak, Boris (1890-1960) Doctor Zhivago, first English edition.
London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1958.
First edition in English, octavo; translated by Max Hayward and Manya Harari; bound in full red publisher's cloth, spine gilt-lettered; with the unclipped pictorial jacket by John Woodcock featuring the author's portrait on the rear panel; contained in a quarter morocco clamshell box by Asprey; 8 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.
This masterful epic of love and wartime survival was initially denied publication by the Soviet Union due to Pasternak's criticism of the October Revolution. After it was suppressed in Russia, Pasternak smuggled the manuscript to Milan with the encouragement of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, a prominent Italian publishing mogul and activist. The first edition was ultimately printed as an Italian translation in 1957.
The novel was an immediate success and played a key role in Pasternak's Nobel Prize for Literature win the following year. Infuriated by the nomination, Soviet forces threatened Pasternak with arrest and suggested that if he should accept the award in Stockholm he would be banned from re-entering Russia. Pasternak renounced the prize soon after. Despite the extraordinary efforts to dampen the novel's influence, it remains one of the most famous works of modern Russian literature. In 1965, director David Lean adapted the work to a film which became one of the highest-grossing Academy Award winners of all time.
