Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era. He is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet, as well as the founder of modern Russian literature.
Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin, born Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov and known during his lifetime by the pen name Nikolai Shchedrin, was a major Russian writer and satirist of the 19th century. He spent most of his life working as a civil servant in various capacities. After the death of poet Nikolay Nekrasov, he acted as editor of a Russian literary magazine Otechestvenniye Zapiski until the Tsarist government banned it in 1884. In his works Saltykov mastered both stark realism and satirical grotesque merged with fantasy. His most famous works, the family chronicle novel The Golovlyov Family (1880) and the novel The History of a Town (1870), also translated as Foolsburg, became important works of 19th-century fiction, and Saltykov is regarded as a major figure of Russian literary Realism.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin.
Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov was a Russian poet and playwright who single-handedly created classical theatre in Russia, thus assisting Mikhail Lomonosov to inaugurate the reign of classicism in Russian literature.
Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov was a Russian poet, writer, critic and publisher, whose deeply compassionate poems about the Russian peasantry made him a hero of liberal and radical circles in the Russian intelligentsia of the mid-nineteenth century, particularly as represented by Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolay Chernyshevsky. He is credited with introducing into Russian poetry ternary meters and the technique of dramatic monologue. As the editor of several literary journals, notably Sovremennik, Nekrasov was also singularly successful and influential.
Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev, better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely, was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. His novel Petersburg (1913/1922) was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as the third-greatest masterpiece of modernist literature. The Andrei Bely Prize, one of the most important prizes in Russian literature, was named after him. His poems were set to music and performed by Russian singer-songwriters.
Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky was lauded by Alexander Pushkin as the finest Russian elegiac poet. After a long period when his reputation was on the wane, Baratynsky was rediscovered by Russian Symbolism poets as a supreme poet of thought.
Sergey Timofeyevich Aksakov was a 19th-century Russian literary figure remembered for his semi-autobiographical tales of family life, as well as his books on hunting and fishing.
Gil Blas is a picaresque novel by Alain-René Lesage published between 1715 and 1735. It was highly popular, and was translated several times into English, most notably by Tobias Smollett in 1748 as The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane.
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin was a Russian author of short stories.
D. S. Mirsky is the English pen-name of Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky, often known as Prince Mirsky, a Russian political and literary historian who promoted the knowledge and translations of Russian literature in the United Kingdom and of English literature in the Soviet Union. He was born in Kharkov Governorate and died in a Soviet gulag near Magadan.
Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin was a Russian playwright and writer of the Russian Enlightenment. He was one of the founders of literary comedy in Russia. His main works are two satirical comedies—including The Minor, which mocks contemporary Russian gentry—which are still staged today.
Nikolai Semenovich Tikhonov was a Soviet writer, poet and public figure.
Count Vasily Vasilievich Kapnist, was a Russian poet, playwright and nobleman who was known as an active critic of serfdom in Russia and as a proponent of restoration of the Zaporozhian host in the region of southern Ukraine.
A lubok is a Russian popular print, characterized by simple graphics and narratives derived from literature, religious stories, and popular tales. Lubki prints were used as decoration in houses and inns. Early examples from the late 17th and early 18th centuries were woodcuts, followed by engravings or etchings, and from mid-19th century lithography. They sometimes appeared in series, which might be regarded as predecessors of the modern comic strip. Cheap and simple books, similar to chapbooks, which mostly consisted of pictures, are called lubok literature. Both pictures and literature are commonly referred to simply as lubki. The Russian word lubok derives from lub - a special type of board on which pictures were printed.
Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy was a controversial Russian editor, writer, translator, and historian; his brother was the critic and journalist Ksenofont Polevoy and his sister the writer and publisher of folktales Ekaterina Avdeeva.
Karolina Karlovna Pavlova was a 19th-century Russian poet and novelist.
Grigory Petrovich Danilevsky was a Russian historical novelist, and Privy Councillor of Russia. Danilevsky is well known as the author of the novel Beglye v Novorossii.
Alexander Ivanovich Ertel was a Russian novelist and short story writer.
Vyacheslav Yakovlevich Shishkov was and Russian and Soviet writer known for his descriptions of Siberia. He was awarded the Stalin State Prize posthumously in 1946.
