Vera Vorontzoff . Rendered into English by Anna von Rydingsvard

First American edition and first edition in English; 16mo, pp. [2], ix, [1], 3-197, [1]; engraved tailpieces; biographical introduction by Rydingsvard; original decorative tan cloth stamped in red, blue, black and silver with strong Russian motifs, uncut, t.e.g.; boards soiled, upper free endpaper excised, very good in a custom quarter red morocco clamshell box, gilt spine. Sonya Kovalevsky's life was a singular one. She entered into a false marriage in order to escape the conservative demands placed upon her by mid-19th-century social mores, and through this ruse was able to pursue a career in mathematics. She won multiple accolades in this field, becoming the first woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics, the first woman to join the editorial board of a scientific journal, the first woman to win the Prix Bordin of the French Academy of Sciences, and the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe. In her later life she turned to writing fiction, with this posthumous novel being her last. It is a semi-autobiographical account of a young Russian noblewoman who longs to dedicate herself to a cause but falls into Nihilism after the emancipation of the Russian serfs.…