Constance Garnett – författare

Alexander Herzen's own brilliance and the extraordinary circumstances of his life combine to place his memoirs among the great testimonies of the modern era. Born in 1812, the illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian landowner, he became one of the most important revolutionary and intellectual figures of his time - as theorist, polemicist and political actor; and fifty years after his death Lenin pronounced him 'the father of Russian socialism'. My Past and Thoughts uniquely assimilates the personal to the historical, and is both a classic of autobiography an an unparalleled record of his century's remarkable life. His account of a privileged childhood among the Russian aristocracy is illuminated with the insight of a great novelist; his friends and enemies - Marx, Wagner, Mill, Bakunin, Garibaldi, Kropotkin - are brought brilliantly to life; and as a sceptical and free-thinking observer, he unerringly traces the line of revolutionary development, from the earliest stirrings of Russian radicalism through the tumultuous ideological debates of the International. 'His power of observation is extraordinary. He tells a story with the economy of a great reporter. His gift is for knowing not only what people are, but how they are historically situated. Somewhere in the pages of this hard, honest observer of what movements do to men, we shall find ourselves.' - V.S. Pritchett

Alexander Herzen's own brilliance and the extraordinary circumstances of his life combine to place his memoirs among the great testimonies of the modern era. Born in 1812, the illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian landowner, he became one of the most important revolutionary and intellectual figures of his time - as theorist, polemicist and political actor; and fifty years after his death Lenin pronounced him 'the father of Russian socialism'. My Past and Thoughts uniquely assimilates the personal to the historical, and is both a classic of autobiography an an unparalleled record of his century's remarkable life. His account of a privileged childhood among the Russian aristocracy is illuminated with the insight of a great novelist; his friends and enemies - Marx, Wagner, Mill, Bakunin, Garibaldi, Kropotkin - are brought brilliantly to life; and as a sceptical and free-thinking observer, he unerringly traces the line of revolutionary development, from the earliest stirrings of Russian radicalism through the tumultuous ideological debates of the International. 'His power of observation is extraordinary. He tells a story with the economy of a great reporter. His gift is for knowing not only what people are, but how they are historically situated. Somewhere in the pages of this hard, honest observer of what movements do to men, we shall find ourselves.' - V. S. Pritchett

Alexander Herzen's own brilliance and the extraordinary circumstances of his life combine to place his memoirs among the great testimonies of the modern era. Born in 1812, the illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian landowner, he became one of the most important revolutionary and intellectual figures of his time - as theorist, polemicist and political actor; and fifty years after his death Lenin pronounced him 'the father of Russian socialism'. My Past and Thoughts uniquely assimilates the personal to the historical, and is both a classic of autobiography an an unparalleled record of his century's remarkable life. His account of a privileged childhood among the Russian aristocracy is illuminated with the insight of a great novelist; his friends and enemies - Marx, Wagner, Mill, Bakunin, Garibaldi, Kropotkin - are brought brilliantly to life; and as a sceptical and free-thinking observer, he unerringly traces the line of revolutionary development, from the earliest stirrings of Russian radicalism through the tumultuous ideological debates of the International. 'His power of observation is extraordinary. He tells a story with the economy of a great reporter. His gift is for knowing not only what people are, but how they are historically situated. Somewhere in the pages of this hard, honest observer of what movements do to men, we shall find ourselves.' - V.S. Pritchett

Alexander Herzen's own brilliance and the extraordinary circumstances of his life combine to place his memoirs among the great testimonies of the modern era. Born in 1812, the illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian landowner, he became one of the most important revolutionary and intellectual figures of his time - as theorist, polemicist and political actor; and fifty years after his death Lenin pronounced him 'the father of Russian socialism'. My Past and Thoughts uniquely assimilates the personal to the historical, and is both a classic of autobiography an an unparalleled record of his century's remarkable life. His account of a privileged childhood among the Russian aristocracy is illuminated with the insight of a great novelist; his friends and enemies - Marx, Wagner, Mill, Bakunin, Garibaldi, Kropotkin - are brought brilliantly to life; and as a sceptical and free-thinking observer, he unerringly traces the line of revolutionary development, from the earliest stirrings of Russian radicalism through the tumultuous ideological debates of the International. 'His power of observation is extraordinary. He tells a story with the economy of a great reporter. His gift is for knowing not only what people are, but how they are historically situated. Somewhere in the pages of this hard, honest observer of what movements do to men, we shall find ourselves.' - V.S. Pritchett

Alexander Herzen's own brilliance and the extraordinary circumstances of his life combine to place his memoirs among the great testimonies of the modern era. Born in 1812, the illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian landowner, he became one of the most important revolutionary and intellectual figures of his time - as theorist, polemicist and political actor; and fifty years after his death Lenin pronounced him 'the father of Russian socialism'. My Past and Thoughts uniquely assimilates the personal to the historical, and is both a classic of autobiography an an unparalleled record of his century's remarkable life. His account of a privileged childhood among the Russian aristocracy is illuminated with the insight of a great novelist; his friends and enemies - Marx, Wagner, Mill, Bakunin, Garibaldi, Kropotkin - are brought brilliantly to life; and as a sceptical and free-thinking observer, he unerringly traces the line of revolutionary development, from the earliest stirrings of Russian radicalism through the tumultuous ideological debates of the International. 'His power of observation is extraordinary. He tells a story with the economy of a great reporter. His gift is for knowing not only what people are, but how they are historically situated. Somewhere in the pages of this hard, honest observer of what movements do to men, we shall find ourselves.' - V.S. Pritchett

Alexander Herzen's own brilliance and the extraordinary circumstances of his life combine to place his memoirs among the great testimonies of the modern era. Born in 1812, the illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian landowner, he became one of the most important revolutionary and intellectual figures of his time - as theorist, polemicist and political actor; and fifty years after his death Lenin pronounced him 'the father of Russian socialism'. My Past and Thoughts uniquely assimilates the personal to the historical, and is both a classic of autobiography an an unparalleled record of his century's remarkable life. His account of a privileged childhood among the Russian aristocracy is illuminated with the insight of a great novelist; his friends and enemies - Marx, Wagner, Mill, Bakunin, Garibaldi, Kropotkin - are brought brilliantly to life; and as a sceptical and free-thinking observer, he unerringly traces the line of revolutionary development, from the earliest stirrings of Russian radicalism through the tumultuous ideological debates of the International. 'His power of observation is extraordinary. He tells a story with the economy of a great reporter. His gift is for knowing not only what people are, but how they are historically situated. Somewhere in the pages of this hard, honest observer of what movements do to men, we shall find ourselves.' - V.S. Pritchett

Ivan Gontcharoff is best known for his second novel, Oblomov. One might say, only known, but, while his output was small, he did write two other novels, some short stories and some travel pieces. A Common Story was his first novel, published in 1847. It opens with its hero, Alexandr Fedoritch asleep. Its plot concerns his departure from the countryside to St Petersburg to pursue a bureaucratic career and his mother trying to prevent him, pointing out the superior qualities of the countryside. The title of the novel is a reference to the time-honoured psychological tension between son and mother. Many of the themes Gontcharoff developed more fully in Oblomov are first seen here.

Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, although made as Communist propaganda to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the mutiny in 1905, is an undoubted film classic. One of its sources was Constantine Feldman's memoir which Faber Finds are reissuing one hundred years after Constance Garnett's translation was first published. Of course this isn't objective history but it is a vivid first-hand account of the unrest in Odessa and of the mutiny itself, the twelve days when the Potemkin flew the red flag of revolution and ruled the Black Sea. Feldman's memoir is a rare book that should be better known; it's scale is smaller but it stands comparison with John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World, his eyewitness account of the 1917 Russian Revolution.