References to specific editions are given only where page references are necessary, or where a writer is little known and little reprinted. After the first reference to each author discussed, the dates of publication of each piece mentioned will be given in brackets in the text.

¹ Grigorovich, D.V., ‘Derevnia’ (The Village), (1846), in Polnoe sobranie sochineniia v 12 tomakh, (St Petersburg, 1896).Google Scholar

² Samarin, Yu. F., ‘O mneniiakh Sovremennika … ‘, Moskvitianin, I, 1847, and Sochineniya (St Petersburg, 1900), I, 77.Google Scholar

³ Belinsky, V.G., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, (Moscow, 1953–1959), X, 321.Google Scholar

⁴ Turgenev, I.S., Zapiski okhotnika (book publication, 1852), has been translated into English by Richard Freeborn (Sketches from a Hunter's Album), (Harmondsworth, 1967).Google Scholar

⁵ Prutskov, N.I. et al. , Istoriia russkoi literatury (Leningrad, 1982), pp. 619–20.Google Scholar

⁶ This argument has been greatly influenced by the concepts of ‘structure of feeling’ and ‘social character’ developed by Williams, Raymond in Chapter 2 of The Long Revolution (London, 1961)Google Scholar, although, as I have suggested, Williams' model is not totally applicable to the kind of work under discussion.

⁷ Druzhinin, A.V., Povesti, dnevnik (Moscow, 1986), p. 150.Google Scholar

⁸ Gogol', N.V., Vybrannye mesta iz perepiski s druźiami (1847).Google Scholar

⁹ Belinsky, , P.S.S., X, 217.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Radishchev, A.N., Puteshestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu (A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow), (1790).Google Scholar

¹¹ Karamzin, N.M., Bednaia Liza (1792).Google Scholar

¹² Sollogub, V.A., Tarantas (1845).Google Scholar

¹³ Pushkin, A.S., Istoriia sela Goriukhina, (1830).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Gogol', N.V., Shinel (The Overcoat), (1841).Google Scholar

¹⁵ The Russian ‘physiological sketch’ was a genre derived directly and deliberately from French examples. Dickens' Sketches by Boz derive from the same source. For an account of the genre in Russia see Kuleshov, V.I., Natural naia shkola v literature XIX veka (Moscow, 1965).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Annenkov, P.V., ‘Romany i rasskazy iz krest'ianskogo byta v 1853m godu’ (Novels and stories of peasant life), Sovremennik, 2 and 3, 1854.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Pisemsky, A.F., Sobranie sochineniia (Moscow, 1982–1984).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Potekhin, A.A., Sochineniia (St Petersburg, 1896).Google Scholar

¹⁹ For instance, François le Champi (the name denotes an infant abandoned in the fields), expresses his support for his protector, a miller's wife, thus: ‘Comment pouvez-vous penser que je manquerai de coeur pur vous consoler et vous soutenir? Est-ce que je ne suis pas votre serviteur pour tant que j'ai à rester sur terre? Est-ce que je ne suis pas votre enfant qui travaillera pour vous, et qui a bien assez de force à cette heure pour ne vous laisser manquer de rien …’ (Sand, Georges, François le Champi, Editions de Poche, (Paris, 1983), pp. 92–3.Google Scholar

²⁰ The most obvious model for formal sophistication is Lermontov's Geroi nashego vremeni (A Hero of our Time), a psychological puzzle which is explored through a series of varied narratives, their sequence designed to provide layers of character analysis rather than to chart events chronologically.

²¹ Avdeev, M.V., ‘Ognennyi zmei’, Otechestvennye zapiski (1853), 86.Google Scholar

²² Grigorovich, D.V., Literaturnye vospominaniia (Moscow, 1961), p. 135.Google Scholar

²³ Review of ‘Smedovskaia dolina’, Moskvitianin, 1852, I, 86.Google Scholar

²⁴ Dal', V.I., Tolkovyi slovaŕ russkogo iazyka (St Petersburg, 1861–1868).Google Scholar

²⁵ Gogol', N.V., ‘Kak ssorilsia Ivan Ivanovich s Ivanom Nikiforovichem’, in Mirgorod, 1835.Google Scholar

²⁶ Kokorev, I.T., ‘Savvushka’, 1852, in Sochineniia, (Moscow, 1956).Google Scholar

²⁷ Dal', V.I., ‘Russkii muzhik’, 1846, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, (St Petersburg/Moscow, 1898).Google Scholar

²⁸ Tolstoi, L.N., Utro pomeshchika, 1856.Google Scholar

²⁹ Even such an undoubted radical as A.I. Herzen did not liberate his serfs (see, e.g., Semevskii, V.I., Krest'ianskii vopros v Rossii v XVII i pervoi polovine XIX veka (St Petersburg, 1888), II, 307Google Scholar), so it is hardly surprising to find that the writers of fiction under consideration, none of whom gave much evidence of political awareness, did not do so. A.F. Pisemsky wrote to his friend the playwright A.N. Ostrovsky in 1855 asking him to send a servant to Pisemsky's estate and ask Gerasim (described as a rogue) to forward the obrok due (Pisemsky, A.F., Piśma, (Moscow/Leningrad, 1934) p. 84).Google Scholar

³⁰ Moskvitianin's harshest attack on Grigorovich is Samarin's (note 3). Later the journal softened. For instance, the review cited in note 23 mentions the earlier ‘unattractiveness of [Grigorovich's] gloomy and sick figures’, and sees some improvement as Grigorovich's acquaintance with peasant life has removed his ‘blindfold’, although he is still blamed for undue literariness and too much dependence on Georges Sand as a model.

³¹ Semevskii, Krest'ianskii vopros, vol. II, passim.Google Scholar

³² The planning and implementation of the Emancipation settlement radically changed perceptions of the peasants. Barely a decade after A Sportsman's Sketches, Bazarov, the radical intellectual of Turgenev's Fathers and Children, finds them stubborn and intractable. Indeed a novel of Druzhinin's shows a landowner reduced to negotiating with peasants as (almost) equals (see Woodhouse, J., ‘Proshloe leto v derevne: A.V. Druzhinin's depiction of the Emancipation year’, Slavonic and East European Review, LXVI, 1, 1988Google Scholar).