Our Notes & References
Rare first publication of the first prose work by one of the greatest Russian authors, a story later collected in his first masterpiece Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.
It is published here anonymously, Gogol still smarting from the poor reception that his verse idyll Hans Kuechelgarten had received the previous year: Gogol had bought and destroyed every copy of that poem that he could find.
This volume of the important Russian literary magazine Otechestvennyia zapiski also includes issue number 117, for January 1830.
Provenance
Indistinct contemporary title signature and shelf mark; Bogoiavlenskii (stamp on title and boards); indistinct stamp of a Moscow institution; Latvijas PSR Zinatnu Akademija (stamp on title verso, with deaccession marks); Robert Eden Martin (b. 1940; American lawyer and noted collector of Russian, British and American literature works).
Item number
1311