TOLSTOÏ (Léon). The Kreutzer Sonata. Paris, Alphonse Lemerre, 1890. In-8, brown half-percaline, title page, cover (contemporary binding). First edition of the first French translation. A copy of the ordinary print run. The Kreutzer Sonata is a short novel in Russian by Leo Tolstoy, written in his Moscow home and published in 1889. It was first published in France by Lemerre in 1890, in a translation by Isaac Pavlovsky and J.-H. Rosny. In the background, the lover, a violinist, plays a Beethoven sonata, the very chamber music that gives the novel its title. The text went on to inspire several musical works, including Leos Janacek's first quartet. It has also been adapted for the screen several times, notably by Russian director Vladimir Gardine in 1914. Binding slightly rubbed, interior yellowed.