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All posts tagged Shakespeare

Vera, or The Nihilists

My interest in British views of Russians recently led me to read Oscar Wilde’s first play, Vera, or The Nihilists, apparently inspired by Vera Zasulich’s attempted assassination of the Governor of St Petersburg in 1878. It’s spectacularly bad, and I’m surprised neither that its first productions, in London in 1880 and New York in 1882, […]

Russkii vestnik 1864

The volumes for 1864 feature the usual round-up of poets: Viazemsky, Fet, Almazov, and Maikov, who has supplements in the first two issues. Women writers seem more prominent than usual, with short stories by L. A. Cherkasova, Novinskaia, and Ol’ga N. The first half of Vigel’s Memoirs appears, as do the middle sections of Subbotin’s […]

Summer reading

The exam season is more or less over, my marking marathon is finished, and one of the things I always look forward to at this time of year is being able to read intelligent books for fun. First up is my annual Dickens fix, and this time I’m reading Oliver Twist. This was the book […]