The Mirror and the Monkey [Soviet Children's Book, 1930]

Drawings and cover by Vera Mikhailovna Ermolaeva
Third edition. M.-L., Gosizdat, 1931. 5.6-7/8", stapled wrappers. 8 pp. Circulation 50,000 copies. Price 10 kop. In publisher's lithographed covers.



CONDITION: VERY GOOD. A particularly bright and clean copy of a scarce Soviet children's book. None online; none in WorldCat. We have located one auction record in 2010 for the second edition [1930], by Russian auction house, Imperia.
Interior is near fine with just a hint of toning typical to newsprint. Minor fading to outer covers, with just a hint of rubbing to spine and corners. Light dampstain inside front cover, not affecting the text block.

In this classic short fable, a monkey notices herself in the mirror. She begins to share her thoughts with a bear sitting next to her: contempt and disgust, calling the reflection a wimp and comparing her with gossiping-girlfriends. To which the bear hints, in vain, that she is looking at herself. The moral is that in her ignorance, the Monkey is ready to see the shortcomings of her "girlfriends", but not her own.

Ivan Andreyevich Krylov [1769-1844] is Russia's best-known fabulist and among the most epigrammatic of Russian authors. While many of his earlier fables were loosely based on Aesop's and La Fontaine's, later fables such as this were original works, often with a satirical bent.
Vera Mikhailovna Ermolaeva [1893-1937], painter and graphic artist associated with several Russian avant-garde movements and workshops. On December 25, 1934, Ermolaeva was arrested with several other artists, and later found guilty of "anti-Soviet activity" and for associating herself with "anti-Soviet intelligentsia." She was sentenced to three years of incarceration. In 1937, she was found guilty a second time and sentenced to death and shot in a labor camp in Kazakhstan. She was posthumously rehabilitated in 1989. In 2013, the Vera Ermolaeva Foundation was established in Moscow dedicated solely to the support of feminist initiatives in contemporary art.

Product Info

Publisher: M.-L., Gosizdat

Year: 1931

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

Seller Info

BurnsBizarre

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