TEFFI NADEZHDA (1872-1952), AUTOGRAPH Autograph letter signed ‘N. Teffi’, addressed to Denis Roche. [Paris, 1928]

1 p. in-8. 27 x 21 cm. In French. With an autograph addressed and stamped envelope. Slight creases to the corners, folds from posting. ‘Dear Sir, I have just received another short story from Berlin, translated into German. It strikes me as a better choice than the ones I sent you. [So] I am sending it to you. And I hope… Yours sincerely, N. Teffi’. Provenance: archive of Denis Roche (1868-1951), French writer and translator. Teffi (Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya) was a Russian writer and poet, memoirist and translator, a contributor to the famous humorous magazine ‘Satyricon’ and sister of the poet Mirra Lokhvitskaya. She was Emperor Nicholas II’s favourite writer. She emigrated after the Revolution. A passionate lover of the Russian language, Denis Roche travelled to Saint Petersburg in 1898, where he met L. Tolstoy, A. Chekhov and I. Repin. He translated works by N. Leskov, I. Turgenev, I. Shmelev, V. Nabokov and other authors from Russian. His greatest achievement, however, was to be one of the first in the West to recognise the prodigious talent of the very young Nabokov. Passionate about his books, D. Roche did much to make Nabokov’s work known in France; in particular, he produced the first French translation of the novel ‘The Luzhin Defence’ (published in 1934 as ‘La Course du fou’).