# Is "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (Universitetskaya Tipografiya, 1842) is identified by: The true first is Pokhozhdeniia Chichikova, ili Mertvyia dushi. Russian true first: Moscow, 1842.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The true first is Pokhozhdeniia Chichikova, ili Mertvyia dushi
- Poema [The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls
- A Poem], Universit
- (Moscow University Press), Moscow, 1842, large octavo (about 25 x 17 cm), 475 pages including the half-title and title, printed in an edition of 2,400 copies
- The title itself is a censorship point and the first thing to check: the Moscow censor refused the book, and after Gogol sent the manuscript to St Petersburg it was passed in March 1842 by the liberal censor Aleksandr Nikitenko subject to roughly thirty wording alterations and to the retitling that pushes 'The Adventures of Chichikov' forward and 'Dead Souls' back — the half-title and title leaf duly give visual precedence to the picaresque half of the title over the satirical half
- The volume carries an engraved title-page
- Publisher imprint reads Universitetskaya Tipografiya

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Nikolai Gogol |
| Publisher | Universitetskaya Tipografiya |
| Year | 1842 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The true first is Pokhozhdeniia Chichikova, ili Mertvyia dushi |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The true first is Pokhozhdeniia Chichikova, ili Mertvyia dushi. Poema [The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls. A Poem], Universit. Tip. (Moscow University Press), Moscow, 1842, large octavo (about 25 x 17 cm), 475 pages including the half-title and title, printed in an edition of 2,400 copies. The title itself is a censorship point and the first thing to check: the Moscow censor refused the book, and after Gogol sent the manuscript to St Petersburg it was passed in March 1842 by the liberal censor Aleksandr Nikitenko subject to roughly thirty wording alterations and to the retitling that pushes 'The Adventures of Chichikov' forward and 'Dead Souls' back — the half-title and title leaf duly give visual precedence to the picaresque half of the title over the satirical half. The volume carries an engraved title-page. The critical condition point is the original printed illustrated upper wrapper, described by specialist dealers as very rare and absent from most surviving copies, which are found rebound in contemporary quarter or half leather over marbled boards. Standard references: Fekula 4716; Kilgour 345; Smirnov-Sokolskii, Moia biblioteka, 610. Note that the first edition prints no table of contents — copies are recorded with one supplied in manuscript on a fly-leaf.

## Is this the true first?
Russian true first: Moscow, 1842. The census claim is confirmed. The first English appearance is the notorious unauthorised adaptation Home Life in Russia, Hurst and Blackett (successors to Henry Colburn), 13 Great Marlborough Street, London, 1854, in two octavo volumes, collating [2], iv, 308 and [2], 314, [2 ads] pages, in publisher's green cloth with blind-stamped boards and spines, gilt spine lettering, yellow coated endpapers and brown-tinted top edges. Gogol's name appears nowhere: the title page reads 'By a Russian Noble' and 'Revised by the Editor of Revelations of Siberia' (i.e. Krystyn Lach-Szyrma). Beware a widespread dealer typo rendering this as 'By a Russian Nobel' — the correct reading is 'Noble'. It is an adaptation of Part One only with an altered ending, one of a spate of 1850s translations doctored and passed off as factual reportage by unnamed Russian noblemen; it is collected as the curious first English appearance, not as a faithful text.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue applies to a book of this date. The reprint tells are edition-level: a second Russian edition followed in 1846 carrying Gogol's added preface, and posthumous collected-works printings follow from the 1850s — any preface by Gogol addressing the reader marks a copy as 1846 or later, not the 1842 first. In English, later nineteenth-century translations (e.g. the 1887 illustrated edition) are separate editions and not reissues of the 1854 Home Life in Russia.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Dead Souls* by Nikolai Gogol a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/dead-souls
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.