Mikhail Bulgakov Diaries and Selected Letters

Octavo; hardcover, with silver-gilt spine-titles; 276pp., with 8pp. of monochrome plates. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. Postage quoted is for a standard format octavo book. Final charges may vary depending on size and weight. Born in Kiev from a line of priests, Mikhail Bulgakov is perhaps the most famous of modern Russian writers, through the simple expedient of having his magnum opus unpublished for over twenty years. Bulgakov graduated from the First Kiev Gymnasium where he developed a passion for Russian and European literature. He enlisted with the Red Cross as a medic during the First World War and was sent to the front, where he was seriously wounded on at least two occasions, leaving him afflicted by chronic pain for the rest of his life. During the Russian Civil War, he and his brothers sided with the White Army and fought for the Czar: eventually he fled with his family to the Caucasus from where his brothers were invited to return to Paris as doctors; Bulgakov himself was barred from emigrating as he had contracted typhus during the wait. He never saw his family again. Returning to Kiev, he began his writing career in earnest completing several short novels inspired by H. G. Wells and his own experiences in battling morphine addiction to quell his chronic abdominal pain. He then moved to Moscow and continued to work as writer; however many of his pieces attracted a severe mauling from the critics on the basis that he was "too anti-Soviet". His material was banned and by 1929 his career was in ruins. Marrying for the third time in 1932 to his muse, Yelena Shilovskaya, he began to secretly write his greatest novel, "The Master and Margarita". Continuing to find no support for his writing efforts, he wrote a play entitled "Batum" which praised Stalin effusively; Stalin himself banned this work but, remembering an earlier play of Bulgakov's which he had seen and enjoyed, he found a position for the embattled writer at the Moscow Art Theatre. Denied the ability to freely express himself even here, he wrote to Stalin in despair asking that he be allowed to emigrate from Russia if no work could be found for him; Stalin rang him personally to ask if indeed he wanted to leave Mother Russia, to which Bulgakov replied (inevitably) that a Russian writer cannot live outside of his homeland. Bulgakov died of Bright's Disease in 1940, leaving his greatest work completed behind him, in secret. It was finally published in 1967 and has since been recognised as one of the greatest works of literature of all time. 9781847493033.…