Short answers, pulled from the story.
Leskov is best known for Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1865), The Cathedral Folk (1872), The Enchanted Wanderer (1873), and "The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea" (1881). He is credited with creating a comprehensive picture of contemporary Russian society using mostly short literary forms, and is recognized as an originator of the skaz style of writing.
Leskov was born on the 4th of February 1831, in the village of Gorokhovo in Oryol Gubernia, Russia. His father was a criminal investigator and his ancestors on his father's side were clergymen in the village of Leska, from which the family name derived.
Leskov wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky, which he used from 1862 to 1869. His first novel No Way Out (1864) was published under this name.
Shostakovich adapted Leskov's novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District into an opera, which he completed in 1934. The opera caused a furore both inside Russia and abroad and was denounced in the Soviet newspaper Pravda in 1936.
Leskov was boycotted by the radical press after his 1862 article on the Saint Petersburg fires and his 1864 novel No Way Out, which satirized nihilist communes. Later, his satires targeting the Russian Orthodox Church led to censorship bans and the loss of his post at the Ministry of Education in 1883. His refusal to align with any political faction left him without institutional support throughout his career.
Chekhov named Leskov and Turgenev as his two "tutors in literature" and used Leskov's work as a template for mastering short story construction. Tolstoy called Leskov "a writer for the future" and praised him as a master, though he felt Leskov's linguistic experiments were sometimes excessive, writing in a letter that one story was excellent but hurt by an "overabundance of talent."