GUMILEV NIKOLAI (1886-1921) Chuzhoe nebo [Foreign Sky]: Third Book of Poems. St. Petersburg: Apollon, 1912. 122, [4] pp.; 23x18 cm. Edition of 1100 copies.

In an ornamental publisher's cover designed by artist M. Dobuzhinsky. In good condition. Tears and losses of fragments on the spine and cover, loss of a fragment of the upper corner of the front cover, edges of the cover are worn. The anthology was published with the subtitle "Third Book of Poems," even though it was the fourth in order, as indicated by Gumilev's list of books provided at the end of the publication. Thus, Gumilev deliberately distanced himself from his first "apprentice" collection, "The Path of the Conquistadors" (1905). Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev (1886-1921) was one of the central figures of the Silver Age, the founder of the Acmeist school in Russian poetry. He was a prose writer, playwright, translator, literary critic, traveler, and Africanist. He undertook two expeditions to Eastern and Northeastern Africa in 1909 and 1913. He was executed on August 26, 1921, on fabricated charges of involvement in the anti-Soviet conspiracy of the "Petrograd Combat Organization of Tagantsev." He was posthumously rehabilitated. Bibliography: Turchinsky. p. 156; Lesman. No. 735.