Curated category
19th-century dramatists and playwrights from the Russian Empire
- Anton ChekhovAnton Chekhov was born on the feast day of St. Anthony the Great in Taganrog, a commercial port city on the Sea of Azov, and he died on the 15th of July 1904…
- Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy spent the last hours of his life on a train, preaching love, non-violence, and Georgism to fellow passengers, before pneumonia stopped him at a…
- Nikolai GogolNikolai Vasilyevich Gogol once described a planned masterpiece as a Russian answer to Dante's Divine Comedy. He never finished it.
- Alexander PushkinAlexander Sergeyevich Pushkin could not speak Russian well until he was ten years old. The boy who would become the father of Russian literature grew up…
- Ivan TurgenevIvan Turgenev had a brain that weighed 2,012 grams, one of the largest ever recorded. The man who carried it was tall and broad-shouldered, yet timid…
- Maxim GorkyMaxim Gorky was born Alexei Maximovich Peshkov in Nizhny Novgorod, and by the time he died in June 1936, his ashes were carried through Moscow by Joseph…
- Ivan KrylovIvan Andreyevich Krylov did not discover his true calling until he was 40 years old. By then he had already tried his hand at comedy writing, journalism…
- Nikolai LeskovNikolai Semyonovich Leskov died on the 5th of March 1895, and his funeral was held in silence. He had written the instruction into his will in December 1892…
- Mikhail Saltykov-ShchedrinMikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin was the kind of writer whose very name became a language. By the end of his life, critics spoke of a prose style so distinctive…
- Nikolay NekrasovNikolay Nekrasov was the Russian poet who turned a funeral into a political uprising. On the 8th of January 1878, four thousand people followed his coffin to…