The Russian novelists

THE
TRANSLATED BY JANE LORING EDMANDS
BOSTON D. LOTHROP COMPANY FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS
Copyright, 1887, BY D. LOTHROP COMPANY. Electrotyped By C. J. Peters and Son, Boston.
The spelling of Russian names is a matter of peculiar difficulty, and no fixed usage in regard to it has as yet been established. I have tried to follow the system presented in the Proceedings of the American Library Association for 1885, but it has been in some cases impossible for me to go back to the original Russian form as a starting-point. I have found it necessary to abridge M. de Vogüé’s work somewhat, in order to bring it within certain prescribed limits.
J. L. E.
In offering this book to the constantly increasing class of persons interested in Russian literature, I owe them a little explanation in regard to the unavoidable omissions in these essays, as well as to their object and aim. The region we are approaching is a vast, almost unexplored one; we can only venture upon some of its highways, selecting certain provinces, while we neglect others.
This volume does not claim to give a complete history of Russian literature, or a didactic treatise upon it. Such a work does not yet exist in Russia, and would be premature even in France.
My aim is quite a different one. To do justice to both the dead and the living, in a history of the literature of only the past hundred years, I should but accumulate a quantity of names foreign to our ears, and a list of works which have never been translated. The entire political and social history of the three preceding reigns should be written, to properly explain the last.
It appears to me better to proceed as a naturalist would do in his researches in a foreign country. He would collect specimens peculiarly characteristic of the climate and soil, and choose from among them a few individual types which are perfectly developed. He draws our attention to them, as best revealing to us the actual and peculiar conditions of life in this particular corner of the earth.