"Doctor Zhivago", by Boris Pasternak, first American edition published by Pantheon, New York, First printing of the First Edition in original price unclipped jacket.

Points of 1st/1st:
"First Published September 1958" without any other printings listed; original price of $5.00 on the front flap of DJ; no dot on the back cover.

"Doctor Zhivago," a novel by Boris Pasternak, was first published in 1957 in Italy. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet, and takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War.

Due to its independent minded stance on the October Revolution, "Doctor Zhivago" was refused publication in the USSR. At the instigation of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the manuscript was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year, an event which both humiliated and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The novel was made into a film by David Lean in 1965, and since then has twice been adapted for television, most recently as a miniseries for Russian TV in 2006.

Although it contains passages written in the 1910s and 1920s, Doctor Zhivago was not completed until 1956. The novel was submitted to the literary journal Novy Mir. However, the editors rejected Pasternak's novel because of its implicit rejection of socialist realism. The author, like his protagonist Zhivago, showed more concern for the welfare of individuals than for the welfare of society. Soviet censors construed some passages as anti-Soviet. They were also enraged by Pasternak's subtle criticisms of Stalinism, Collectivization, the Great Purge, and the Gulag.

In 1957, Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli arranged for the novel to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union by Sergio D'angelo. Upon handing his manuscript over, Pasternak quipped, "You are hereby invited to watch me face the firing squad."

Despite desperate efforts by the Union of Soviet Writers to prevent its publication, Feltrinelli published an Italian translation of the book in November 1957. So great was the demand for "Doctor Zhivago" that Feltrinelli was able to license translation rights into eighteen different languages well in advance of the novel's publication. The Communist Party of Italy expelled Feltrinelli from their membership in retaliation for his role in the publication of a novel they felt was critical of communism.

Soon English and French translations were also printed. On October 23, 1958, Boris Pasternak was announced as the winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature. The citation credited Pasternak's contribution to Russian lyric poetry and for his role in, "continuing the great Russian epic tradition". On 25 October, Pasternak sent a telegram to the Swedish Academy: "Infinitely grateful, touched, proud, surprised, overwhelmed." On 26 October, the Soviet "Literary Gazette" ran an article by David Zaslavski entitled, "Reactionary Propaganda Uproar over a Literary Weed". Acting on direct orders from the Politburo, the KGB surrounded Pasternak's dacha [cottage] in Peredelkino. Pasternak was not only threatened with arrest, but the KGB also vowed to send his mistress Olga Ivinskaya back to the concentration camp, where she had been imprisoned under Stalin. It was further hinted that, if Pasternak traveled to Stockholm to collect his Nobel Medal, he would be refused re-entry to the Soviet Union.

As a result, Pasternak sent a second telegram to the Nobel Committee: "In view of the meaning given the award by the society in which I live, I must renounce this undeserved distinction which has been conferred on me. Please do not take my voluntary renunciation amiss." Despite his decision to decline the award, the Soviet Union of Writers continued to denounce Pasternak in the Soviet press. Furthermore, he was threatened at the very least with formal exile to the West. Pasternak died in his home in Peredelkino on the evening of 30 May 1960.

Despite only a small notice appearing in the Literary Gazette, thousands of admirers traveled from Moscow to Pasternak's civil funeral in Peredelkino. According to Jon Stallworthy, "Volunteers carried his open coffin to his burial place and those who were present, including the poet Andrey Voznesensky, recited from memory the banned poem 'Hamlet'." One of the speakers at the graveside service said, "God marks the path of the elect with thorns, and Pasternak was picked out and marked by God. He believed in eternity and he will belong to it... We excommunicated Tolstoy, we disowned Dostoyevsky, and now we disown Pasternak. Everything that brings us glory we try to banish to the West... But we cannot allow this. We love Pasternak and we revere him as a poet... Glory to Pasternak!

Until the 1980s, Pasternak's poetry was only published in heavily censored form. Furthermore, his reputation continued to be pilloried in State propaganda until Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed Perestroika. In 1988, after decades of circulating in underground press, "Doctor Zhivago" was finally serialized in the pages of Novy Mir, which had changed to a more anti-communist position than in Pasternak's lifetime. The following year, the son, Yevgeny Pasternak was at last permitted to travel to Stockholm to collect his father's Nobel Medal. At the ceremony, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich performed a Bach composition in honor of his fellow Soviet artist

US: Priority (c.2-4 days) --------- $16.50
Canada: Priority (c.2-6 weeks) --- $27.50
World: Priority (c.2-8 weeks) ---- $37.50

Original un-clipped dust jacket is protected in clear mylar cover; hard boards, original publisher's red cloth, 5.1/2" x 8.1/2"; 559 pages, nice and clean inside, very good condition.