Mayakovsky, Vladimir. There and Back: Poems and Essays (Tuda i obratno. Stikhi i ocherki). Binding design by A. Levin, 1936. In Russian.

Маяковский, Владимир Владимирович (1893-1930). Туда и обратно : стихи и очерки / редактор В. Катанян.
Москва : Государственное издательство "Художественная литература", 1936 (1-я Образцовая типография ОГИЗа РСФСР треста "Полиграфкнига"). 365, [3] с., 1 л. фронтиспис (портрет автора) ; 19,3х13,5 см.
Издательский твердый переплет с тиснением по передней крышке, работы художника А. Левина. Тираж 35 000 экз.
Переплет в хорошем состоянии: потертость и разводы по краям и углам, небольшие утраты покровного материала на кромках корешка и уголках, обнажающие картон. Блок в очень хорошем состоянии: бумага чистая, без пятен и пожелтения; фронтиспис и все страницы полностью сохранены.
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Mayakovsky, Vladimir (1893-1930). There and Back : poems and essays / editor Viktor Katanyan.
Moscow : State Publishing House "Khudozhestvennaya Literatura," 1936 (1st Model Printing House of OGIZ RSFSR, "Poligrafkniga" Trust). 365, [3] pp., 1 leaf frontispiece (author portrait) ; 19.3 x 13.5 cm.
Publisher's hardcover binding with blocked lettering on front board, design by A. Levin. Print run of 35,000 copies.
Binding good: rubbing and staining at edges and corners, small losses of covering material at spine ends and corner tips exposing board. Text block very good: paper clean, free of foxing and toning; frontispiece and all leaves fully present.

A substantial posthumous compilation, edited by Viktor Katanyan, of everything Mayakovsky wrote in connection with his travels abroad between 1925 and 1929: poems from his journeys to Latin America, the United States, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France, together with his prose cycle of essays "My Discovery of America" (covering Mexico, New York, and the wider United States) and a documentary appendix listing all of Mayakovsky's foreign trips. This should not be confused with the slim 96-page collection of the same title that Mayakovsky himself compiled and published in his lifetime in December 1929 (Moscow: Federatsiya, 1930, with a Constructivist cover by Alexander Rodchenko), a landmark of Soviet book design now counted among the rarest and most valuable of his lifetime editions; the present 1936 volume is an entirely distinct, far larger scholarly compilation assembled six years after the poet's death. As Mayakovsky's closest literary secretary and one of the principal architects of his posthumous reputation and bibliography, Viktor Katanyan brought together in one volume the full arc of a theme he identifies in his introduction as one of the richest in Soviet lyric and publicistic poetry: the Soviet poet confronting the capitalist world. The collection captures Mayakovsky at his most internationally engaged, from the biting satire of American consumer capitalism in poems such as "Bruklinskii most" and "Neboskreb v razreze" to his celebrated "Stikhi o sovetskom pasporte." The volume is illustrated with a photogravure frontispiece portrait of the poet and reproduces, among other period material, a page from the magazine "Krasnaya Niva" featuring Mayakovsky's own travel sketches. It will appeal to collectors of Soviet literature, Mayakovsky bibliography, and 1920s-30s Soviet travel writing and America-themed literature.