[ Tolstoy in English. ] Printed advertising handbill by London publisher Walter Scott, beginning with the first collected edition of 'Count Tolstoi's Works', with the first volume 'A Russian Proprietor And other Stories. By Count Lyof N. Tolstoi'.

The handbill is 4pp., 8vo. on a bifolium. In good condition, on aged paper. The upper half of the first page carries the advertisement for 'Count Tolstoi's Works', headed 'Vol. I ready October 25th.' With coloured illustration of the book's design, captioned 'Reduced fac-simile of binding'. Regarding what is the earliest edition of Tolstoy's collected works in English (predating those of Wiener and Garnett by more than ten years), the publisher writes: 'Mr. Walter Scott has the pleasure to announce that he has made arrangements to publish, in Monthly Volumes, a series of translations of works by the eminent Russian novelist, Count Lyof N. Tolstoi. These translations, direct from the Russian, are by Mr. Nathan Haskell Dole, and admirably reproduce the spirit and style of the original. The English reading public will be introduced to an entirely new series of works by one who is probably the greatest living master of fiction in Europe, and one upon whose personality and opinions, - social, ethical, and religious, - a unique attention is concentrated. To those unfamiliar with the works of Count Tolstoi, these volumes will come as a new revelation of power.' (Haskell's translation was first published the previous year in New York by T. Y. Crowell & Co., for whom he acted as an editor.) In a separate column is a similar description for the first volume in the series, 'A Russian Proprietor And other Stories', 'a striking example of his literary method'. Beneath the Tolstoy advertisement, also with an illustration of the binding, is one for the 'Windsor Series of Poetical Anthologies'. Also advertised in the pamphlet are The Camelot Series', 'The Canterbury Poets', and, on the back cover with illustration of binding, a series of lives of 'Great Writers' ('Volumes in Preparation by Oscar Browning, Goldwin Smith, W. H. Pollock, W. E. Henley, Etc.').