Ludmilla A. Trigos is an independent scholar.Carol Ueland is professor emerita of Russian at Drew University.

This trailblazing book examines two enduring and tightly intertwined trends in modern Russian culture: the central importance of writers in the national imagination and the perennial popularity of The Lives of Remarkable People series and of biography more generally. The first ever comparison of the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet iterations of this best-selling biographical series, this volume fascinatingly shows how stories of writers’ lives—and literary biography as a genre—have transformed in Russia from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. A tour de force of ‘comparative biography,’ it balances historical breadth with meticulous case studies by leading scholars of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Brodsky, and many other authors. This rich and revealing collection is a major addition to Russian literature and culture scholarship and to biography studies.

• AcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationIntroduction: Writing and Re-Writing the Literary Canon: A History of Russian Biography in the Lives of Remarkable People Series—Ludmilla A. Trigos and Carol UelandChapter 1: The Remarkable Pushkin —Angela Brintlinger Chapter 2: Larger than Life: The Meaning of Griboedov in Russian National Biography—Catherine O’Neil Chapter 3: N.V. Gogol, Biographer’s Conundrum– Ludmilla A. Trigos Chapter 4: Remarkable Tolstoy, from the Age of the Tsars to the Putin Era— Caryl EmersonChapter 5: Per Aspera Ad Astra: The Remarkable Lives of Fyodor Dostoevsky – Alexander SpektorChapter 6: Searching for the “Real” Chekhov: Approaches and Appropriations—Radislav Lapushin Chapter 7: From Idol to Villain and (Almost) Back: Gorky as Editor and Subject of Lives of Remarkable People)– Irene Masing-Delic Chapter 8: Alexander Blok as the Model Modernist– Jonathan Stone Chapter 9: Narrating Eccentricity: The ZhZL Biographies of Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva—Alexandra Smith

Ludmilla A. Trigos is an independent scholar.Carol Ueland is professor emerita of Russian at Drew University.

This trailblazing book examines two enduring and tightly intertwined trends in modern Russian culture: the central importance of writers in the national imagination and the perennial popularity of The Lives of Remarkable People series and of biography more generally. The first ever comparison of the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet iterations of this best-selling biographical series, this volume fascinatingly shows how stories of writers’ lives—and literary biography as a genre—have transformed in Russia from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. A tour de force of ‘comparative biography,’ it balances historical breadth with meticulous case studies by leading scholars of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Brodsky, and many other authors. This rich and revealing collection is a major addition to Russian literature and culture scholarship and to biography studies.

• AcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationIntroduction: Writing and Re-Writing the Literary Canon: A History of Russian Biography in the Lives of Remarkable People Series—Ludmilla A. Trigos and Carol UelandChapter 1: The Remarkable Pushkin —Angela Brintlinger Chapter 2: Larger than Life: The Meaning of Griboedov in Russian National Biography—Catherine O’Neil Chapter 3: N.V. Gogol, Biographer’s Conundrum– Ludmilla A. Trigos Chapter 4: Remarkable Tolstoy, from the Age of the Tsars to the Putin Era— Caryl EmersonChapter 5: Per Aspera Ad Astra: The Remarkable Lives of Fyodor Dostoevsky – Alexander SpektorChapter 6: Searching for the “Real” Chekhov: Approaches and Appropriations—Radislav Lapushin Chapter 7: From Idol to Villain and (Almost) Back: Gorky as Editor and Subject of Lives of Remarkable People)– Irene Masing-Delic Chapter 8: Alexander Blok as the Model Modernist– Jonathan Stone Chapter 9: Narrating Eccentricity: The ZhZL Biographies of Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva—Alexandra Smith

Ludmilla A. Trigos is an independent scholar.Carol Ueland is professor emerita of Russian at Drew University.

This trailblazing book examines two enduring and tightly intertwined trends in modern Russian culture: the central importance of writers in the national imagination and the perennial popularity of The Lives of Remarkable People series and of biography more generally. The first ever comparison of the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet iterations of this best-selling biographical series, this volume fascinatingly shows how stories of writers’ lives—and literary biography as a genre—have transformed in Russia from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. A tour de force of ‘comparative biography,’ it balances historical breadth with meticulous case studies by leading scholars of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Brodsky, and many other authors. This rich and revealing collection is a major addition to Russian literature and culture scholarship and to biography studies.

• AcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationIntroduction: Writing and Re-Writing the Literary Canon: A History of Russian Biography in the Lives of Remarkable People Series—Ludmilla A. Trigos and Carol UelandChapter 1: The Remarkable Pushkin —Angela Brintlinger Chapter 2: Larger than Life: The Meaning of Griboedov in Russian National Biography—Catherine O’Neil Chapter 3: N.V. Gogol, Biographer’s Conundrum– Ludmilla A. Trigos Chapter 4: Remarkable Tolstoy, from the Age of the Tsars to the Putin Era— Caryl EmersonChapter 5: Per Aspera Ad Astra: The Remarkable Lives of Fyodor Dostoevsky – Alexander SpektorChapter 6: Searching for the “Real” Chekhov: Approaches and Appropriations—Radislav Lapushin Chapter 7: From Idol to Villain and (Almost) Back: Gorky as Editor and Subject of Lives of Remarkable People)– Irene Masing-Delic Chapter 8: Alexander Blok as the Model Modernist– Jonathan Stone Chapter 9: Narrating Eccentricity: The ZhZL Biographies of Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva—Alexandra Smith