Classicly

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West.

The six tales now translated for the English reader were written by Turgenev at various dates between 1847 and 1881. Their chronological order is:—

1. Pyetushkov, 1847
2. The Brigadier, 1867
3. A Strange Story, 1869
4. Punin and Baburin, 1874
5. Old Portraits, 1881
6. A Desperate Character, 1881

Pyetushkov is the work of a young man of twenty-nine, and its lively, unstrained realism is so bold, intimate, and delicate as to contradict the flattering compliment that the French have paid to one another—that Turgenev had need to dress his art by the aid of French mirrors.