Born: 28 October 1818 · Died: 22 August 1883 · Age: 64
Russian novelist of Fathers and Sons and A Sportsman's Sketches whose portraits of serfdom influenced its abolition
Did you know?He spent much of his adult life living in France and was close friends with famous Western writers like Gustave Flaubert.
Quick facts
Date of birth28 October 1818
Date of death22 August 1883
Age at death64
Cause of deathSpinal cord neoplasm
NationalityRussian
BirthplaceOryol, Russia
Occupationwriter, poet, playwright
Editor's Take:
Ivan Turgenev was the most European of the great Russian novelists. Born to a wealthy, landowning family, he saw the cruelty of serfdom from childhood. His Sketches from a Hunter's Album showed peasants as full human beings. It is said to have influenced the tsar's decision to free the serfs. Fathers and Sons introduced the word nihilist to a wide audience. He spent much of his life in France and Germany. He was a friend of Flaubert and Henry James.
Key Milestones
1852: A Sportsman's Sketches – stories
1855: A Month in the Country – play
1862: Fathers and Sons – novel
1871: Paris – settles in France
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818–1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. His first major publication, a short story collection titled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism.
