Russian Literature

The Choice of a Tutor by Denis Fonvizin

At the end of October 1915, in the British literary magazine The New Age, Carl Erich Bechhöfer continued with his regular column 'Letters from Russia', which he had been contributing from the turn of the year. His subject this time was Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin (1745-1792), the Russian playwright, whose name Bechhöfer renders as 'von Vizin', which had been the typical spelling...

Tommaso Landolfi and ‘Gogol’s Wife’

The issue of Nikolai Gogol's romantic life has long vexed biographers and critics. With significant gaps in his biography, especially during his travels and years spent abroad, and with Gogol elusive on the subject in his letters to friends, interest has often centred upon his fiction, which has been navigated and interpreted for all manner of clues. All we know is...

Crimea in the Russian Empire: A Cultural History

Kievan Rus flourished from about 882 – when Prince Oleg moved the capital of the Rus from Novgorod to Kiev – until the 13th century, when the Mongol Empire invaded and destroyed their major cities. While Russia gradually threw off the ‘Mongol-Tatar Yoke’, and began to emerge round the city of Moscow as a powerful independent state, Kiev and...

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