Short answers, pulled from the story.
Afanasy Fet was born on the 5th of December 1820 to Afanasy Shenshin and Charlotte Becker. His father was a forty-four-year-old Russian landlord from Mtsensk while his mother was a twenty-two-year-old daughter of a German inn-keeper.
The couple married in Germany but their union proved legally void within Russia fourteen years later. This legal failure forced young Afanasy to change his surname from Shenshin to Foeth, the name of his biological father Johann Foeth.
In 1851 Maria died having set her dress on fire four days after the incident. An immense feeling of remorse tormented Fet for the rest of his life until his death at age seventy-one.
In 1873 Tsar Alexander II granted Fet the return of his stepfather's surname with all rights and privileges of Russian nobility. That same year Fet bought a second village Vorobyovka nearby Kursk and returned to writing poetry.
Early in the morning on the 21st of November 1892 Fet suddenly sent for champagne despite his wife's protest. He signed this document the 21st of November Fet Shenshin before falling on a chair lifeless as the cause of his death was later believed to be a heart attack.