Turgenief

Turgenief, IWAN SERGEIWITCH (1818-83), the great Russian novelist, was born of noble parentage at Orel. He was educated at Berlin as well as at the Russian universities. In 1846 he first became known by his Annals of a Sportsman, directed against the evils of serfdom. His liberal opinions resulted in imprisonment and banishment to his estates, and for the latter half of his life he lived abroad, first at Baden-Baden and then at Paris. He especially excelled in the short story, and he was thought very highly of by French critics, in whose language many of his works were originally written. Among his earlier tales may be mentioned A Nest of Nobles (or Lisa) and Helene (On the Eve); of the later, Smoke, Virgin Soil, and Annouchka were some of the best. He also wrote poems and dramas. Like Tolstoi, he was pessimist in thought, but he had little of the later writer's sympathy with the Young Russian movement.