Aleksey Pisemsky

Aleksey Feofilaktovich Pisemsky (1821–1881) was a Russian novelist and playwright whose fiction and drama portrayed provincial life and social change.

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A Thousand Souls: A novel by Pisemsky, published in 1858, about ambition, provincial administration, and social hierarchy. This novel gives his most sustained picture of provincial power and the compromises ambition demands.
Kostroma: A historic city in western Russia, northeast of Moscow. Pisemsky was born in Kostroma province, a background reflected in his attention to provincial life.
Ivan Turgenev: A Russian novelist and playwright known for works including Fathers and Sons. Turgenev and Pisemsky were contemporaries whose fiction engaged with changing Russian society.
Leo Tolstoy: A Russian novelist and essayist whose major works include War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Tolstoy’s broad historical and psychological canvases differ in scale and method from Pisemsky’s provincial focus.
The Troubled Sea: Pisemsky’s novel of the 1860s, depicting Russian society amid the reforms and conflicts of the era. It extends his social panorama beyond provincial routine into the upheavals of the 1860s.
Moscow University: A public research university founded in Moscow in 1755. Pisemsky studied at Moscow University before beginning his literary career.
Ivan Goncharov: A Russian novelist best known for Oblomov, a study of inertia and social life. Goncharov offers a useful comparison among novelists depicting Russian social types.
Alexander Ostrovsky: A Russian playwright whose dramas often depict merchants and domestic life. Ostrovsky’s stage-centered realism makes a direct comparison with Pisemsky’s plays especially useful.
The Bitter Fate: A drama by Pisemsky about a peasant household and the injustice faced by its central character. This play brings his attention to rural life onto the stage through domestic conflict.
Russian literature: Literature written in the Russian language, spanning multiple genres and historical periods. His novels and plays belong to the nineteenth-century expansion of Russian prose and drama.