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Johnson's Russia List #8037 28 January 2004 [log in to unmask] A CDI Project www.cdi.org #1 ALEXANDER PUSHKIN'S COMPLETE WORKS PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH MOSCOW, January 28, 2004. (RIA Novosti) -- On Wednesday the Russian State Library (the former Lenin library) will host the presentation of the 15-volume edition of complete works by the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in the English language. This is the fullest edition of Pushkin's works in English. In the 19th century few classic translations of Pushkin's poems were made. All in all, 10 percent of the poet's legacy (selected verses, poems, fairy-tales and critical articles) was translated into English. Preparations for the edition of Pushkin's complete works took more than ten years. It started in the late 1980s on the initiative of British MP and publisher Iain Sproat and on the support of Raisa Gorbacheva, the wife of the Soviet President, and academician Dmitry Likhachev, the chairman of the Russian Culture Foundation. The first five volumes of Pushkin's complete works in English were published in 1999, when the 200th anniversary of the poet's birth was celebrated. The leading Russian, British and American experts in Pushkin's works were involved in the edition. Best translations both by Russian and English authors were selected. James E. Falen's translation of "Eugene Onegin" was included in the first edition of Alexander Pushkin's complete works in the English language. "The History of Peter the Great" and historical prose works were translated and published for the first time. ********