Bely, Andrei, pseud. [Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev]

first edition in book form of bely's masterpiece, considered by Nabokov as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Bely (1880-1934), the son of the famous mathematician N.V. Bugaev, and poet, novelist, literary critic and theorist, was a leading member of the Russian symbolists. He fell out with Aleksandr Blok after having an affair with Blok's wife, before he married Asia Turgenev, the great-niece of Ivan Turgenev, in 1912.

Set in the chaos of St Petersburg of 1905, Petersburg is a story of conspiracy and betrayal seen through the eyes of a young revolutionary Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov, who is called upon to assassinate his own father, Senator Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, a plot which ultimately fails. The three parts of Petersburg were originally published in the journal Sirin in 1913 and 1914, and were reprinted here without the half-titles that appeared in the journal. Bely published a revised version of the novel in 1922.