Bibliographical Notes

While this book was being prepared for print a work of great value for all the English-speaking lovers of Russian literature appeared in America. I mean the Anthology of Russian Literature from the earliest Period to the present Time, by Leo Wiener, assistant professor of Slavic languages at Harvard University, published in two stately volumes by Messrs. Putnam’s Sons at New York. The first volume (400 pages) contains a rich selection from the earliest documents of Russian literature — the annals, the epic songs, the lyric folk-songs, etc., as also from the writers of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. It contains, moreover, a general short sketch of the literature of the period and a mention is made of all the English translations from the early Russian literature. The second volume (500 pages) contains abstracts, with short introductory notes and a full bibliography, from all the chief authors of the nineteenth century, beginning with Karamzín and ending with Tchéhoff, Górkiy, and Merezhkóvskiy. All this has been done with full knowledge of Russian literature and of every author; the choice of characteristic abstracts hardly could be better, and the many translations which Mr. Wiener himself has made are very good. In this volume, too, all the English translations of Russian authors are mentioned, and we must hope that their number will now rapidly increase. Very many of the Russian authors have hardly been translated at all, and in such cases there is nothing else left but to advise the reader to peruse French or German translations. Both are much more numerous than the English, a considerable number of the German translations being embodied in the cheap editions of Reklam.

A work concerning Malo-Russian (Little-Russian) litera ture, on lines similar to those followed by Mr. Wiener, has appeared lately under the title, Vik; the Century, a Collection of Malo-Russian Poetry and Prose published from 1708 to 1898, 3 vols. (Kiev, Peter Barski) ; (analysed in Atheneum, January 1o, 1903.)

Of general works which may be helpful to the student of Russian literature I shall name Ralston’s Early Russian History, Songs of the Russian People, and Russian Folk Tales (1872–1874), as also his translation of Afanásieff’s Legends; Rambaud’s La Russie épique (1876) and his excellent History of Russia (Engl. trans.) ; Le roman russe, by Vogue; Impressions of Russia, by George Brandes (translated by Eastman ; Boston, 1889), and hís Moderne Geister, which contains an admirable chapter on Turguéneff.

Of general works in Russian, the following may be named: History of Russian Literature in Biographies and Sketches, by P. Polevóy, 2 vols., illustrated (1883; new edition, enlarged, in 1903) ; and history of the New Russian Literature from 1848 to 1898, by A. Skabitchévskiy, 4th ed., 1900, with 52 portraits. Both are reliable, well written, and not bulky works — the former being rather popular in character, while the second is a critical work which goes into the analysis of every writer. The recently published Gallery of Russian Writers, edited by I. Ignátoff (Moscow, 1901), contains over 250 good portraits of Russian authors, accompanied by one page notices, quite well written, of their work. A very exhaustive work is History of the Russian Literature by A. Ppin, in 4 vols., (1889), beginning with the earliest times and ending with Púshkin, Lérmontoff, Gógol, and Koltsóff. The same author has written a History of Russian Ethnography, also in 4 vols. Among works dealing with portions only of the Russian literature the following may be mentioned: Tchernyshévskiy’s Critical Articles, St. Petersburg, 1893 ; Annenkoff’s Púshkin and His Time; 0. Miller’s Russian Writers after Gógol; Merezhkóvskiy’s books on Púshkin and another on Tolstóy; and Arsénieff’s Critical Studies of Russian Literature, 2 vols., 1888 (mentioned in the text) ; and above all, of course, the collections of Works of our critics: Byelínskiy (12 vols.) ; Dobrolúboff (4 vols.), Písareff (6 vols.), and Mihailóvskiy (6 vols.), completed by his Literary Reminiscences.

A work of very great value, which is still in progress, is the Biographic Dictionary of Russian Writers, published and nearly entirely written by S. Venguéroff, who is also the editor of new, scientifically prepared editions of the complete works of several authors (Byelínskiy is now published). Excellent biographies and critical sketches of all Russian writers will be found in the Russian Encyclopædia Dictionary of Brockhaus-Efron. The first two volumes of this Dictionary (they will be completed in an Appendix) were brought out as a translation of the Lexikon of Brockhaus; but the direction was taken over in good time by a group of Russian men of science, including Mendeléeff, Woiéikoff, V. Solovióff, etc., who have made of the 82 volumes of this Dictionary, completed in 1904 (at 6 sh. the volume) — one of the best encyclopædias in Europe. Suffice it to say that all articles on chemistry and chemical technics have been either written or carefully revised by Mendeléeff.

Complete editions of the works of most of the Russian writers have lately been published, some of them by the editor Marks, in connection with his weekly illustrated paper, at astoundingly low prices, which can only be explained by a circulation which exceeds 200,000 copies every year. The work of Gógol, Turguéneff, Gontcharóff, Ostróvskiy, Boborykin, Tchéhoff, and some minor writers, like Danilévskiy and Lyeskóff, are in this case.