Ivan Turgenev, 1818 - 1883 Novelist, poet and playwright, Ivan Turgenev, was born to a wealthy family in Oryol in the Ukraine region of Russia. He attended St. Petersburg University (1834-37) and Berlin University (1838-41), completing his master's exam at St. Petersburg. His career at the Russian Civil Service began in 1841. He worded for the Ministry of Interior from 1843-1845. In the 1840's, Turgenev began writing poetry, criticism, and short stories under Nikolay Gogol's influence. "A Sportsman's Sketches" (1852) were short pieces written from the point of view of a nobleman who learns to appreciate the wisdom of the peasants who live on his family's estate. This brought him a month of… detention and eighteen months of house arrest. From 1853-62, he wrote stories and novellas, which include the titles "Rudin" (1856), "Dvorianskoe Gnedo" (1859), "Nakanune" (1860) and "Ottsy I Deti" (1862). Turgenev left Russia, in 1856, because of the hostile reaction to his work titled "Fathers and Sons" (1862). Turgenev finally settled in Paris. He became a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1860 and Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford University in 1879. His last published work, "Poems in Prose," was a collection of meditations and anecdotes. On September 3, 1883, Turgenev died in Bougival, near Paris.
Jane T. Costlow is Clark Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies at Bates College. She is the author of Worlds within Worlds: The Novels of Ivan Turgenev and coeditor of The Other Animals: Situating the Non-Human in Russian Culture and History and Representations of the Body and Sexuality in Russian Culture .