TURGENEV'S LETTERS

A Selection of the Russian novelist-dramatist-short story writer's letters is both generous and representative and offers a further illumination of this writer- particularly in relation to his own work and to other writers of his time, Zola, Flaubert, Dostoevski, and course Tolstoy. While many of the letters are addressed to Pauline Viardot-Garcia, whom in his own words here he loved and respected more than anyone else in the world, they are not of a very personal nature- nor are those addressed to his daughter or his brother. Some bear reference to his arrest and political difficulties following the article written at Gogol's death; others to his uneven relationship with Tolstoy; and they vary in interest from comments on the times- say the Franco-Prussian war- to more timeless questions (i.e. death, etc.). The letters had as their destinations a host of people, many unknown to the general reader, but they offer the student and more serious reader of Turgenev in particular and Russian literature in general, additional source and reference material.