Nikolai Gogol

Russian dramatist and novelist Nikolai Gogol, the founder of realism in Russian literature, was born in 1809 in Ukraine. He moved to St. Petersburg in 1828, where he supported himself by working as a history professor and a civil servant. In 1831, he met Alexander Pushkin and began a close friendship that would later influence his writing. That year, Gogol published “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka,” a collection of short stories about his life in Ukraine that brought him great success. Over the next few years he published several successful short stories that combined humor and the fantastic, including “Taras Bulba” (1835), “Diary of a Madman” (1835), “The Nose” (1836), and “The Overcoat” (1942). He also produced the plays THE MARRIAGE (1835), THE GAMBLERS (1836), DECORATION OF VLADIMIR OF THE THIRD CLASS (1832), and THE INSPECTOR GENERAL (1836), his famous satire of corrupt public officials. From 1836 to 1846 Gogol lived in Rome, where he wrote his picaresque novel “Dead Souls.” He lived in Russia during the last few years of his life and attempted to write a second part to “Dead Souls,” but in 1852, he destroyed the manuscript. Gogol died a few days later in Moscow.