Unjacketed hardcover in red boards, gilt lettering and decoration. Works of poet V A Zhukovsky (1783-1852), with biographical essays, literary criticism, historical context. Illustrated with archival photographs and drawings. All Russian text. 10/08 rs-3


Vasilii Zhukovsky is perhaps the most important Russian literary figure in the pre-Pushkinian era. He was born on 29th January (9th February, New Style) 1783 in the village of Mishenskoe in the Belev district of Tula province. He was the illegitimate son of a landlord, Afanasii Ivanovich Bunin, and a Turkish woman named Sal’kha, who had been captured at the siege of Bender in 1770 (the name and nationality of his mother is omitted from at least one Soviet account, presumably for nationalistic or puritanical reasons). He was brought up by a poor landowner, Andrei Grigor’evich Zhukovsky, who lived in Bunin’s household. Bunin lost six of his eleven legitimate children, including his only son, and when he himself died 1791, it was arranged that his eldest daughter (and also Zhukovsky’s godmother), V.A. Iushkova, should adopt the eight-year-old Vasilii Zhukovsky, who rapidly became a favourite in the household. She sent him to school in Tula and then educated him in her home together with her two daughters, Avdot’ia and Anna. His status as a nobleman was ensured by a fictitious enlistment in (and prompt retirement from) the army.


1812
Joins Moscow militia, witness battle of Borodino and writes "A Brad in the Camp of Russian Warriors" which, to a large extent, cemented his reputation; writes the lyrics "Dreams" and mystical "Elisium"

When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, Zhukovsky joined the Russian general staff under Field Marshal Kutuzov. There he wrote much patriotic verse, including the original poem, A Bard in the Camp of the Russian Warriors, which helped to establish his reputation at the imperial court. He also composed the lyrics for the national anthem of Imperial Russia, "God Save the Tsar!" After the war, he became a courtier in St. Petersburg, where he founded the jocular Arzamas literary society in order to promote Karamzin's European-oriented, anti-classicist aesthetics.