Full Title:

The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum by Himself. Translated from the Seventeenth Century Russian by Jane Harrison and Hope Mirrlees, with a Preface by Prince D.S. Mirsky

Publication:

London, The Hogarth Press, 1924.

Binding:

16mo 6 ¾ in. x 4 ⅜ in. Blue figured cloth; white paper label on spine; front cover blank. Spine: [all in a single ruled box] [in italic] The | Life of | The | Archpriest | Avvakum (see image above).

Notes:

It's now 1924, and The Hogarth Press has grown up. The books are no longer letterpressed on the Woolfs' kitchen table, but machine printed in proper printing houses. Commercially produced as it is, though, this is still a pretty little book bound in attractive figured cloth.

Avvakum was the last of HM's works to be published by Hogarth, and the first of the two Russian translations she did in partnership with Jane Harrison. The book is the autobiography of a seventeenth century Russian priest. To me at least, Avvakum's incessant bleating about his own piety and the tribulations he suffers at the hands of the unworthy is simply tiresome, and the best part of the book is Prince Mirsky's introduction. This is not to slight Mirrlees and Harrison's translation, which I'm sure is deft and accurate; both were accomplished linguists. It's the work itself I don't like.

In Collected Poems, CP-A1, Sandeep Parmar suggests that HM's involvement in this project was actually minimal, with most of the work by Harrison and Mirsky. Mirrlees was in England during the period the bulk of the translation was done, while Harrison and Mirsky were working together in Paris.