Tag Archive: 0pre-Revolutionary Russia

This little book may not look much, but it turned out to be a fascinating read.  Entitled Sketches of the life of orchestral musicians, it’s the first edition of an early work by Ivan Lipaev (1865–1942), for many years a trombonist with the Bolshoi Orchestra in Moscow, and professor of music at the conservatoire in Saratov, […]

Something for Children’s Book Week: Magic Tricks.  By the six-year-old Samuel Hopkins (Moscow, 1911), published as a supplement to Svetliachok (“The Little Glow-worm”), a pre-Revolutionary children’s magazine aimed at 4–8-year-olds.  It recounts the conjuring abilities of a six-year-old English boy, Samuel Hopkins, with illustrated descriptions of some of his tricks so that the young reader might ‘pleasantly […]