17 Facts About Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin spent most of his life working as a civil servant in various capacities.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin Saltykov was born on 27 January 1826 in the village of Spas-Ugol as one of the eight children in the large Russian noble family of Yevgraf Vasilievich Saltykov and Olga Mikhaylovna Saltykova.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's father belonged to an ancient Saltykov noble house that originated as one of the branches of the Morozov boyar family.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin spent his early years on his parents' large estate in Spasskoye on the border of the Tver and Yaroslavl governorates, in the Poshekhonye region.

Olga Mikhaylovna, though, was a woman of many talents; having perceived some in Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, she treated him as her favorite.

The Saltykovs often quarreled; they gave their children neither love nor care and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, despite enjoying relative freedom in the house, remembered feeling lonely and neglected.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin was taught to read and write Russian by the serf painter Pavel Sokolov and a local clergyman, and became an avid reader, later citing the Gospel, which he read at the age of eight, as a major influence.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin then enrolled in the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum in Saint Petersburg, spending the next six years there.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's criticism was sharp, and Belinsky's influence on it was evident.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin worked on it while on vacation in a village near Tver, sending it to Vyatka to be published as a series.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin settled in a small house, often visited people and received guests.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin personally sued several landowners accusing them of cruel treatment of peasants.

In 1880 Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin extracted all of them to begin a separate book which evolved into his most famous novel, showing the stagnation of the land-based dvoryanstvo.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin proved to be an unsuccessful landowner, though, and finally sold it, having lost a lot of money.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin planned another piece called Forgotten Words but never even started it.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin is regarded to be the most prominent satirist in the history of the Russian literature.

The use of Aesopic language was one reason why Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin has never achieved as much acclaim in the West as had three of his great contemporaries, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, according to Sofia Kovalevskaya.