47 Facts About Nikolai Leskov

In 1847 Nikolai Leskov joined the Oryol criminal court office, later transferring to Kiev, where he worked as a clerk, attended university lectures, mixed with local people, and took part in various student circles.

Nikolai Leskov died on 5 March 1895, aged 64, and was interred in the Volkovo Cemetery in Saint Petersburg, in the section reserved for literary figures.

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was born on 4 February 1831, in Gorokhovo, Oryol Gubernia, to Semyon Dmitrievich Leskov, a respected criminal investigator and local court official, and Maria Petrovna Leskova, the daughter of an impoverished Moscow nobleman, who first met her future husband at a very young age, when he worked as a tutor in their house.

Nikolai Leskov spent his first eight years in Gorokhovo, where his grandmother lived and where his mother was only an occasional guest.

Nikolai Leskov acquired his early education in the house of Strakhov, who employed tutors from Germany and France for his own children.

In 1839 Semyon Nikolai Leskov lost his job through a row and intrigue, having brought upon himself the wrath of the governor himself.

In June 1847 Nikolai Leskov joined the Oryol criminal court office, where Semyon Dmitrievich had once worked.

In December 1849 Leskov asked his superiors for a transfer to Kiev, where he joined the local government treasury chamber as an assistant clerk and settled with his maternal uncle, S P Alferyev, a professor of medicine.

In 1853 Nikolai Leskov married Olga Smirnova; they had one son, Dmitry, and a daughter, Vera.

In May 1857 Nikolai Leskov moved with his family to Raiskoye village in Penza Governorate where the Scotts were based, and later that month embarked upon his first business trip, involving the transportation of the Oryol-based serfs of Count Perovsky to the Southern Russian steppes, not entirely successfully, as he later described in his autobiographical short story "The Product of Nature".

Nikolai Leskov considered his long essay "Sketches on Wine Industry Issues", written in 1860 about the 1859 anti-alcohol riots and first published in a local Odessa newspaper, then in Otechestvennye Zapiski, to be his proper literary debut.

In January 1861 Nikolai Leskov moved to Saint Peterburg where he stayed at Professor Ivan Vernadsky's along with Zemlya i volya member Andrey Nechiporenko and met Taras Shevchenko.

For Severnaya ptchela Leskov became the head of the domestic affairs department, writing sketches and articles on every possible aspect of everyday life, and critical pieces, targeting what was termed nihilism and "vulgar materialism".

In December Nikolai Leskov was in Paris, where he translated Bozena Nemcova's Twelve Months, both translations were published by Severnaya ptchela in 1863.

On his return to Russia in 1863 Nikolai Leskov published several essays and letters, documenting his trip.

All this seemed to confirm the view, now firmly rooted in the Russian literary community, that Nikolai Leskov was a right-wing, 'reactionary' author.

In 1870 Nikolai Leskov published the novel At Daggers Drawn, another attack aimed at the nihilist movement which, as the author saw it, was quickly merging with the Russian criminal community.

The short novel Laughter and Grief, a strong social critique focusing on the fantastic disorganization and incivility of Russian life and commenting on the sufferings of individuals in a repressive society proved to be his last; from then on Nikolai Leskov avoided the genre of the orthodox novel.

In October 1872 another collection, Small Belle-lettres Works by Nikolai Leskov-Stebnitsky came out.

In December 1873 Nikolai Leskov took part in Skladchina, the charity anthology aimed at helping victims of famine in Russia.

In 1874 Nikolai Leskov began writing Wandering Lights: A Biography of Praotsev which was halted and later printed as Early Years: From Merkula Praotsev's Memoirs.

Nikolai Leskov never became a Tolstoyan, but his later works were impregnated with the idea of "new Christianity" which he himself identified with Leo Tolstoy, whom he became close with in the mid-1880s and was inevitably influenced by.

Nikolai Leskov spent January 1890 with Chertkov and Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, where Tolstoy read to them his own play The Fruits of Enlightenment.

Nikolai Leskov himself referred to the stories of his later years as "cruel".

At the 1888 New Year party at Alexei Suvorin's, Nikolai Leskov met Anton Chekhov for the first time.

Nikolai Leskov was interred in the Literatorskiye Mostki necropolis at the Volkovo Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.

On 6 April 1853 Nikolai Leskov married Olga Vasilyevna Smirnova, the daughter of an affluent Kiev trader.

Nikolai Leskov married Dmitry Noga in 1879 and died in 1918.

Nikolai Leskov's marriage was an unhappy one; his wife suffered from severe psychological problems and in 1878 had to be taken to the St Nicholas Mental Hospital in Saint Petersburg.

Bubnova had four children from her first marriage; one of whom, Vera Bubnova, was officially adopted by Nikolai Leskov, who took care that his stepdaughter got a good education; she embarked upon a career in music.

Nikolai Leskov had never identified himself with any party and had to take the consequences.

Nikolai Leskov's case is a striking instance of the failure of Russian criticism to do its duty.

Apollon Grigoriev, the only critic who valued him and approved of his work, died in 1864 and, according to Mirsky, "Nikolai Leskov owed his latter popularity to the good taste of that segment of the reading public who were beyond the scope of the 'directing' influences".

In 1923 three volumes of Nikolai Leskov's selected works came out in Berlin, featuring an often-quoted rapturous preface by Maxim Gorky, and was re-issued in the USSR in early 1941.

Several scholarly essays came out and then an extensive biography by the writer's son Andrey Nikolai Leskov was published in 1954.

In 1996 the Terra publishing house in Russia started a 30 volume Nikolai Leskov series, declaring the intention to include every single work or letter by the author, but by 2007 only 10 volumes of it had come out.

All 36 volumes of the 1902 Marks Complete Nikolai Leskov were re-issued in 2002 and Moshkov's On-line Library gathered a significant part of Nikolai Leskov's legacy, including his most controversial novels and essays.

But, while Gleb Uspensky, Vasily Sleptsov and Fyodor Reshetnikov were preaching "the urgent need to study the real life of the common people," Nikolai Leskov was caustic in his scorn: "Never could I understand this popular idea among our publicists of 'studying' the life of the common people, for I felt it would be more natural for a writer to 'live' this kind of life, rather than 'study' it," he remarked.

Nikolai Leskov was not indifferent to social injustice, according to Bukhstab.

Some modern scholars argue that, contrary to what his contemporary detractors said, Nikolai Leskov had not held "reactionary" or even "conservative" sensibilities and his outlook was basically that of a democratic enlightener, who placed great hopes upon the 1861 social reform and became deeply disillusioned soon afterwards.

Unlike Dostoevsky, who saw the greatest danger in the development of capitalism in Russia, Nikolai Leskov regarded the "immovability of Russia's 'old ways' as its main liability," critic Viduetskaya insisted.

Many critics and colleagues of Nikolai Leskov wrote about his innovative style and experiments in form.

Tellingly, Nikolai Leskov was the first of the major Russian authors to notice Chekhov's debut and predict his future rise.

Maxim Gorky was another great admirer of Nikolai Leskov's prose, seeing him as one of the few figures in 19th century Russian literature who had both ideas of their own and the courage to speak them out loud.

Nikolai Leskov was continuously experimenting with forms, his most favourable being "the chronicle" which he saw as a healthy alternative to orthodox novel.

The major issue contemporary critics had with Nikolai Leskov's prose was what they perceived to be an "overabundance of colours"; the grotesque expressiveness of the language he used.

Nikolai Leskov attributed great social importance to history, seeing it as a major factor in healthy social development.