Mayakovsky, Vladimir, Velimir Khlebnikov, and others.

folio (355 x 243mm.), [limited to 640 copies], 2 vignettes by David Burliuk, original printed wrappers, worn and browned, wrappers chipped, browned

Hellyer 546; Ex-Libris 193; The Russian Avant-Garde Book 99

This important collection of poetry contains pieces by Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov, Aseev, Kamensky, Pasternak and Brik, also essays by Khlebnikov and Shklovsky, including one on Mayakovsky’s important poem “Oblako v shtanakh [A Cloud in Trousers]”. Shklovsky was interested in the Futurists from an academic slant and a year earlier, 1914, he had delivered a famous lecture in the Stray Dog Café in St Petersburg, in which he used the general principles of the evolution of language to argue for the importance of the Futurists’ radical changes and games with language.