Generally thought to be the work that led to the abolishment of serfdom in Russia, "Sketches from a Hunter's Album (A Sportsman's Sketches)" is a series of short stories, written in 1852, that gained Turgenev widespread recognition for his unique writing style. These stories were the result of Turgenev's observations while hunting all over Russia, particularly on his abusive mother's estate at Spasskoye. A definitive work of the Russian Realist tradition, this collection of sketches unveils the author's insights on the lives of everyday Russians, from landowners and their peasants, to bailiffs and mournful doctors, to unhappy wives and mothers. Turgenev captures their tragedies and triumphs, losses and love in a set of stories that condemned the behavior of the ruling class. Considered subversive writing, Turgenev was confined to his mother's estate, yet his "Sketches" opened the eyes of many people of his time, proving him not only an artist but also a social reformer whose abilities ultimately affected the lives of countless Russians.

The Essential Turgenev will provide American readers with the first comprehensive, portable edition of this great Russian author's works. It offers an extensive introduction to the writings that established Turgenev as one of the preeminent literary figures of his time, and reveals the breadth of insight into changing social conditions that made Turgenev a portal to Russian intellectual life. Readers will find complete, exemplary translations of Turgenev's finest novels, Rudin, A Nest of Gentry, and Fathers and Sons, along with the lapidary novella First Love. The volume also includes selections from Sportsman's Sketches, seven of Turgenev's most compelling short stories, and fifteen prose poems. It also contains samples of the author's nonfiction drawn from autobiographical sketches, memoirs, public speeches, plus the influential essay "Hamlet and Don Quixote" and correspondence with Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and others.

On one level the novel is about the homecoming of Lavretsky, who, broken and disillusioned by a failed marriage, returns to his estate and finds love again - only to lose it. The sense of loss and of unfulfilled promise, beautifully captured by Turgenev, reflects his underlying theme that humanity is not destined to experience happiness except as something ephemeral and inevitably doomed. On another level Turgenev is presenting the homecoming of a whole generation of young Russians who have fallen under the spell of European ideas that have uprooted them from Russia, their 'home', but have proved ultimately superfluous. In tragic bewilderment, they attempt to find reconciliation with their land.

Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) was one the best-known Russian novelists of the 19th century. Among his books, "Fathers and Sons" (1862) stands out as a masterpiece. Turgenev's shorter fiction was equally popular. Written in the late 1870s and early 1880s, his "Poems in Prose" are regarded as a classical example of what is now known as flash fiction. The translation has been carefully edited, and the almost always omitted story, "Threshold", which is regarded as one of Turgenev's best, reinstated to its rightful place.

Turgenev's first major prose work is a series of twenty-five Sketches: the observations and anecdotes of the author during his travels through Russia satisfying his passion for hunting. His album is filled with moving insights into the lives of those he encounters - peasants and landowners, doctors and bailiffs, neglected wives and bereft mothers - each providing a glimpse of love, tragedy, courage and loss, and anticipating Turgenev's great later works such as First Love and Fathers and Sons. His depiction of the cruelty and arrogance of the ruling classes was considered subversive and led to his arrest and confinement to his estate, but these sketches opened the minds of contemporary readers to the plight of the peasantry and were even said to have led Tsar Alexander II to abolish serfdom.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) was a great Russian novelist and playwright. His novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of major works of 19th-century fiction. After the standard schooling for a child of a gentleman's family, He studied for one year at the University of Moscow and then moved to the University of St Petersburg, focusing on the classics, Russian literature and philology. Turgenev was impressed with German Central-European society, and believed that Russia could best improve itself by imitating the West. Like many of his educated contemporaries, he was particularly opposed to serfdom. He first made his name with A Sportsman's Sketches, also known as Sketches From a Hunter's Album; or, Notes of a Hunter. He wrote several short novels like The Diary of a Superfluous Man, Faust, and The Lull. In them Turgenev expressed the anxieties and hopes of Russians of his generation. Amongst his other works are Liza: A Nest of Nobles, The Jew and Other Stories, On the Eve, A Reckless Character and Other Stories, The Torrents of Spring, and The Rendezvous.

"No, no, I've got your word for it, I've got to die ... you promised me ... you told me ..." Turgenev's accounts of hunting in rural Russia, and the extraordinary characters he meets there. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883). Turgenev's works available in Penguin Classics are Fathers and Sons, First Love, Home of the Gentry, On the Eve, Rudin, Sketches from a Hunter's Album, Spring Torrents and Three Sketches from a Hunter's Album.

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