Hardcover, 26.2 x 20.3 cm, quarter blue cloth over pictorial boards, pictorial endpapers, collated in-8vo, 1-58 64, pp.: [2] 3-87 [88], total 44 leaves with in-text woodcuts plus 8 leaves of colour plates (14 illustrations printed on both sides) and colour frontispiece (blank recto) after Gustave Doré.
The story was written by Rudolf Erich Raspe in English and published anonymously in book form in Oxford in 1786 under the title Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his marvellous travels and campaigns in Russia, etc. The French translation from German of Gottfried August Bürger was performed by Théophile Gautier and published by Charles Furne in Paris in 1862 with illustrations after Gustave Doré – 158 wood engravings, including a frontispiece, 1 vignette on the title, 31 full-page plates and 125 vignettes in the text). Korney Chukovsky retold the Raspe story in Russian using the Būrger-Gautier version of the text, changing the order, time, and location of events. In addition, artist Yuri Syrnev (Ю. А. Сырнев) coloured Dore’s woodcuts, and the book was born (first edition in 1928).
Title-page (black and yellow earth): Э. РАСПЭ | ПРИКЛЮЧЕНИЯ | {vignette} | МЮНХАУЗЕНА | С ИЛЛЮСТРАЦИЯМИ | ГУСТАВА | ДОРЭ | • | ДЛЯ | ДЕТЕЙ | ПЕРЕСКАЗАЛ К.ЧУКОВСКИЙ | • | ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ИЗДАТЕЛЬСТВО ДЕТСКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ | НАРКОМПРОСА РСФСР | Москва 1945 Ленинград ||
Colophon: Для младшего возраста | РАСКРАСКА ВКЛЕЕК, ТИТУЛ И ОБЛОЖКА | худ. Ю. Сырнева | Издание десятое ||
Edition: 10th Russian edition thus.
Print run: 11,000 copies.
Contributors:
Rudolf Erich Raspe (German, 1736 – 1794) – author.
Korney Chukovsky [Корней Иванович Чуковский, Николай Корнейчуков] (Russian, 1882 – 1969) – translator.
Gustave Doré (French, 1832 – 1883) – artist.
Юрий Аркадьевич Сырнев (Russian, 1905 – 1943) – artist.
Fictional author: Baron Munchausen [Baron Münchhausen] / Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Münchhausen (German, 1720 – 1797).
