Some other famous Russian AuthorsMikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov
Birth Date: May 15, 1891 Death Date: March 10, 1940 Place of Birth: Kiev, Ukraine Mikhail Bulgakov was a famous Russian novelist, playwright and short stories writer. His most popular novels were the Master and Margarita (1967) and the Heart of a Dog (1968). Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Birth Date: January 29, 1860 Death Date: July 14, 1904 Place of Birth: Taganrog, Russia Anton Chekhov is a famous Russian short story writer, dramatist and playwright. He began to freelance as a journalist and writer of comic sketches. He produced several masterpieces of the one-act plays. The most popular Anton Chekhov plays are Ivanov (1887), The Wood Demon (1888), The Bear (1888), The Wedding (1889), The Seagull (1897), Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904). Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
Birth Date: March 20, 1809 Death Date: February 21, 1852 Place of Birth: Sorochincy, Ukraine Gogol was born in Sorochintsi in Ukraine, but moved to Saint Petersburg in 1828. In 1831, he met Alexander Pushkin, who supported him as a writer and became his friend. He later taught history at Saint Petersburg University from 1834 to 1835. He went on to write a number of short stories set in Saint Petersburg, including "Nevsky Prospekt", the Diary of a Madman, "The Overcoat", and "The Nose" (which was later turned into an opera by Dmitri Shostakovich). However, it was his farce The Inspector General, produced in 1836, which first drew him to the public's attention as a writer. Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
Birth Date: May 26, 1799 Death Date: January 29, 1837 Place of Birth: Moscow, Russia Place of Death: St. Petersburg, Russia
The Russian poet and prose writer Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837) ranks as the country's greatest poet. He not only brought Russian poetry to its highest excellence but also had a decisive influence on Russian literature in the 19th and 20th centuries. Russian 19th century author who often has been considered his country's greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin blended Old Slavonic with vernacular Russian into a rich, melodic language. He was the first to use everyday speech in his poetry. Pushkin's Romantic contemporaries were Byron (d. 1824) and Goethe (d. 1832), but his ironic attitude can be connected to the literature of the 18th century, especially to Voltaire. Pushkin wrote some 800 lyrics with a dozen narrative poems.
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Birth Date: August 28, 1828 Death Date: November 9, 1910 Place of Birth: Tula Province, Russia Place of Death: Astapovo, Russia Leo Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828 at Yasnya Polyana, in Tula Province, the fourth of five children. His parents died when he was a child, and he was brought up by relatives. In 1844 Tolstoy started his studies of law and oriental languages at Kazan University, but he never took a degree. Dissatisfied with the standard of education, he returned in the middle of his studies back to Yasnya Polyana, and then spent much of his time in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the 1850s Tolstoy also began his literary career, publishing the autobiographical trilogy Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth (1857). Tolstoy's fiction grew originally out of his diaries, in which he tried to understand his own feelings and actions so as to control them.
Tolstoy's major work, War and Peace , appeared between the years 1865 and 1869. The epic tale depicted the story of five families against the background of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Tolstoy's other masterpiece, Anna Karenina (1873-77), told a tragic story of a married woman, who follows her lover, but finally commits suicide. Tolstoy juxtaposed in the work crises of family life with the quest for the meaning of life. After finishing Anna Karenina Tolstoy renounced all his earlier works and wrote Conversion (1879) to explain his doctrines. Voskresenia (1899, Resurrection) was Tolstoy's last major novel.
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
Birth Date: October 28, 1818 Death Date: September 4, 1883 Place of Birth: Oryol, RussiaIvan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a famous Russian short story writer, novelist and playwright. The most popular Ivan Turgenev novels and stories are Fathers and Sons (1862), Notes of a Hunter (The Hunter's Sketches) (1852), Rudin (1857), Mumu,A Nest of Nobles (Home of the Gentry) (1859),Asya (1858), First Love (1860).
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