The Russian Novelists

What it is

This is a book by the French writer Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé, whose survey of Russian novelists was translated into English by Jane Loring Edmands and published in Boston by D. Lothrop Company in 1887. The translator's note explains that she abridged the original to fit set limits. The archive copy is a scanned PDF from the Internet Archive, and its opening text is in English.

Why it matters

Vogüé's book helped introduce Russian fiction to Western readers in the 1880s. The collection record lists Dostoevsky among its subjects, along with Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev and Tolstoy, so it shows how these writers were grouped together for English-speaking readers of the time.

Look closer

• Why might a French author's view of Russian novels be read by English-speaking audiences in translation?
• What did the translator change or cut, and how might that affect the picture of the novelists?
• Which Russian writers are grouped together here, and which voices are missing from the survey?