Nadezhda Gorodetsky’s autographs in Belarus

Abstract

The article analyzes inscriptions made by the writer Nadezhda Gorodetsky (Gorodetskaya) on her books gifted to M. Osorgin and P. Berkov. In a brief biographical summary included in the article, we learn about Gorodetsky — a Russian émigré writer and critic, and the key milestones of her literary career, including the years in Paris and England (Oxford and Liverpool). At large the study is concerned with two of her autographs discovered by Sidorova in Belarussian libraries. Their descriptions feature a detailed cultural-historical commentary. The first autograph appears on a copy of A Non-Through-Line [Neskvoznaya nit], Gorodetsky’s novel published in Paris in 1929: it is a presentation inscription with Osorgin as its recipient. The other was left on the front endpaper of the monograph Saint Tikhon Zadonsky, Inspirer of Dostoevsky, converted from Gorodetsky’s own doctoral thesis and published in London in 1951; the author, its previous owner, inscribed the copy to Berkov.