The Queen of Spades, and other stories

CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Alexander Sergueievitch Pushkin came of a noble family, so ancient that it was traced back to that Alexander Nevsky who, in the thirteenth century, gained a great victory over the Swedes upon the ice of the River Neva, in token whereof he was surnamed Nevsky of the Neva.
His mother, Nadejda Ossipovna Hannibal, was the grand-daughter of Abraham Petrovitch Hannibal, Peter the Great's famous negro. His father, Surguei Lvovitch Pushkin, was a frivolous man of pleasure.
The poet was born on the 26th of May, 1799, at Moscow. He was an awkward and a silent child. He was educated by French tutors. A poor scholar, he read with eagerness whatever he could get in his father's library, chiefly the works of French authors. His brother states that at eleven years old Pushkin knew French literature by heart. This cannot, of course, be taken literally; but it shows under what influence he grew up. In October, 1811, he entered the Lyceum of Tsarskoe Selo. Among the students a society was soon formed, whose members were united by friendship and by a taste for literature. They brought out several periodicals, in which tales and poems formed the chief features. Of this society (the late Prince Gortchakoff belonged to it) Pushkin was the leading spirit. His first printed poem appeared in the Messenger of Europe in 1814. At a public competition in 1815, at which the veteran poet Derjavin was present, Pushkin read his Memories of Tsarskoe Selo. This poem, which contains many beautiful passages, so delighted Derjavin, that he wished to embrace the young author; but Pushkin fled in confusion from the hall.
In June, 1817, Pushkin's free and careless student life ended. After finishing his course at the Lyceum he went to St. Petersburg, and, though he entered thoroughly into the dissipated pleasures of its turbulent youth, he still clung to the intellectual society of such men as Jukovsky and Karamsin, men occupied in literature, whose friendship he valued very highly.