Ivan Turgenev’s first literary masterpiece is a sweeping portrayal of the magnificent nineteenth–century Russian countryside and the harsh lives of those who inhabited it. In a series of sketches, a hunter wanders through the vast landscape of steppe and forest in search of game, encountering a varied cast of peasants, landlords, bailiffs, overseers, horse traders, and merchants. He witnesses both feudal tyranny and the fatalistic submission of the tyrannized, against a backdrop of the sublime and pitiless terrain of rural Russia.
These beautifully embellished, evocative stories were not only universally popular with the reading public but, through the influence they exerted on important members of the Tsarist bureaucracy, contributed to the major political event of mid–nineteenth–century Russia, the Great Emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Rarely has a book that offers such undiluted literary pleasure also been so strong a force for significant social change.
Translated from the Russian by Charles and Natasha Hepburn.
Editorial Reviews
"To re-read A Sportsman's Notebook in a new and brilliant translation by Charles and Natasha Hepburn...leads one to suspect...that these short sketches are the finest things Turgenev ever wrote..." --London Times Literary Supplement
"Sherwood Anderson once called A Sportsman's Notebook 'the sweetest thing in all literature.' If he exaggerated, it was not by far." --Time
About the Author
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born in Orel in 1818 and was educated at the universities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 1839 he went to study at the University of Berlin, where he acquired the Western values for which he was much criticized in Russia throughout his life. His relationship with the opera singer Pauline Viardot caused his tyrannical mother to cut off his funds, and he lived as a Bohemian until her death in 1850 made him a rich man. His first successful novel, A Sportsman’s Sketches (1852), was a sympathetic picture of Russian peasants and a condemnation of serfdom; it was widely believed to have contributed to the Tsar’s decision to emancipate the serfs, much as Uncle Tom’s Cabin was said to influence the emancipation of the American slaves. In the following productive decade, Turgenev published Rudin (1856), A Nest of Gentlefolk (1858), On the Eve (1860), First Love (1860), and Fathers and Sons (1862)—all of which drew critics’ applause. His liberal views were politically suspect, however, and he chose to live the rest of his life in France. His novels Smoke (1867) and Virgin Soil (1877) show the depth of his bitterness, but his last visit to Russia in 1880 marked a triumphant homecoming. He died in 1883, at Bougival, near Paris.
