Turgenev by Edward Garnett

If we have said nothing hitherto about the twenty years of Turgenev's life (1855-1877), in which the six great novels were composed, it is because his cosmopolitan activities, social, political, intellectual, were too many to be chronicled in the compass of a short Study. They may be here indicated in a few lines. Lengthy stays in France, and visits to Germany, Italy, England, were alternated with residence every year at Spasskoe. His attachment to Madame Viardot and her family (which may be studied in _Lettres à Madame Viardot_, Paris, 1907, a series unfortunately not published in its entirety) led to his joining their household at Courtavenel and Paris, and later (1864) to settling with them at Baden. His residence in France brought him into contact with nearly all the celebrated French men of letters, Mérimeé, Taine, Renan, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, etc., and later with the chiefs of the young naturalistic school, as Zola, Daudet, Guy de Maupassant.

Turgenev's political outlook and Liberal creed are best represented in his Correspondence with Hertzen, to whom he communicated Russian news for _The Bell_: his relations and quarrel with Tolstoy, and his enthusiastic appreciation of the latter's genius are recorded in Biriukoff's _Life of Tolstoy_, and in Halperine-Kaminsky's _Correspondence_. For his relations with Russian contemporary men of letters, Fet, Grigorovitch, Nekrassov, Dostoevsky, Annenkov, Aksakov, etc., there exists a mass of documents, letters and reminiscences in the Russian. For a general sketch of Turgenev's life the English reader can turn to E. Haumant's _Ivan Tourguénief_, Paris, 1906; for an account of Turgenev's youth, his relations with the Nihilists, his later life in Paris, etc., to Michel Delines' _Tourguénief Inconnu_, and also to the much-abused but valuable volume, _Souvenirs sur Tourguéneff_, by Isaac Pavlovsky.