# 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. Census confirmed on the Russian first: Moscow University Press, Moscow, 1842 is the true first.

**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 | British edition |
| 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, which seldom survives and is absent from most 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 (the leaf was never printed, so it is not 'missing').

## Is this the true first?
Census confirmed on the Russian first: Moscow University Press, Moscow, 1842 is the true first. One refinement to the census wording: the first English-language appearance, 'Home Life in Russia. By a Russian Noble. Revised by the Editor of "Revelations of Siberia." In Two Volumes' (London: Hurst and Blackett, Successors to Henry Colburn, 13 Great Marlborough Street, 1854), is better described as an unauthorized and heavily doctored adaptation than as a piracy in the strict sense. It renders Part One only, with an altered ending, whole passages expunged and imaginative flourishes added, and was marketed to a Crimean-War-era British public as factual reportage on Russian life. Gogol is nowhere named on the title page — the attribution is to 'A Russian Noble' — and the volumes are bound in publisher's olive-green cloth, blind-stamped, spines lettered in gilt. It is itself a collected book alongside the Moscow 1842 first. Note that several dealer catalogues transcribe the title-page phrase as 'By a Russian Nobel'; the title page itself reads 'A RUSSIAN NOBLE' (verified against the 1854 scan), so treat 'Nobel' as a catalogue-transcription artifact rather than a point of issue.

## 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.