Mikhail Avdeiev

Mikhail Vasilyevich Avdeev (, October 10, 1821, Orenburg, Russian Empire – February 13, 1876, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire) was a Russian novelist, playwright and publicist, best known for the Tamarin trilogy, published in 1849–1852 by Sovremennik.

Biography Mikhail Vasilyevich Avdeev was born on October 10 (September 21, old style), 1821, in the old Yaik Cossacks family in Orenburg. One of his private teaches was the Polish author and social activist Tomasz Zan, and it was to the latter's credit that the boy developed his passion for literature. In the late 1820s the family moved to Ufa where Mikhail studied in a gymnasium. In the mid-1830s he enrolled into the Saint Petersburg Institute of Railroad Engineers and, having graduated in 1842, went to work in Nizhny Novgorod.

In 1856 Avdeed was granted the permission to leave the country. Three years later he returned to Russia from France (where he became close to Ivan Turgenev) and in 1860 published his Underwater Rock novel, the idea of a 'free love' being its leitmotif. The novel was criticized for being schematic and 'cold'. "Lifelessness in the major feature of all Avdeev's works," critic Nikolai Strakhov opined. Even less successful with critics was his Between the Two Fires (1868) novel, featuring landlord Kamyshlintsev as a main character, whose occupation seemed to be "dreaming of big love and of some great cause to pursuit" and whom Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin defined as "the type of a Wanton Russian man".

And yet, according to the Russian Literary Dictionary, "both readers and critics of the time admired Avdeev for his gift of storytelling, coupled with willingness to respond eagerly to any trendy theme or social issue." "What made him popular was his liberal, humane attitude and the agility with which he was throwing himself headfast into every new social current," Alexander Skabichevsky wrote.

Selected bibliography

Fiction Varenka/The Notes of Tamarin/Ivanov - the Tamarin trilogy (1849–1852, three novels) Letters of a Vacant Man to the Province About Life in Petersburg (Pisma 'pustovo tcheloveka' v provintsiyu o peterburgskoy zhizni, 1853, novelet). Underwater Rock (Podvodny kamen, 1860, novel) Between the Two Fires (Mezhdu dvukh ognei, 1868, novel) Magdalene (1870, novelet) The Motley Life (Pyostrenkaya zhizn, 1870, novelet) The Dried Out Love (Sukhaya lyubov, 1870, novelet) In the Forties (V sorokovykh godakh, 1876, novel)

Non-fiction Our Society as Shown in Heroes and Heroines of the 1820–1879 Russian Literature (Nashe obshchestvo [1820–1870] v geroyakh i geroinyakh russkoi literatury, 1874, essay collection) My Times in 1830s (Moi vremena v 30-kh godakh, 1876, memoirs)

Plays The Philistine Family (Meshchanskaya semya, 1868) The Sixth Sense (Shestoye tchuvstvo)