Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya

Nadezhda Dmitryevna Khvoshchinskaya (; May 20, 1821 – June 8, 1889), was a Russian novelist, poet, literary critic and translator. Her married name was Zayonchkovskaya (; a Russified Polish-language surname Zajączkowska). She published much of her work under the pseudonym V. Krestovsky. She later added "alias" to her pseudonym to avoid being confused with the writer Vsevolod Krestovsky.

Early life Khvoshchinskaya was born into a gentry family in the Ryazan Governorate, where her father held a civil service post until being dismissed due to accusations of embezzlement of government funds. The legal proceedings that followed deprived him of a large sum of money, and forced him to sell off his property. It took him ten years to prove his innocence, while the family sank into poverty. Because of poor health and lack of money, Khvoshchinskaya received most of her education at home from private tutors, attending a boarding school only for a short time between the ages of eleven and twelve.

Khvoshchinskaya was the oldest of five children. Documents suggest she was born in 1821, though nineteenth-century sources gave her year of birth as 1824 or 1825. Two of her younger sisters, Sofia and Praskovia, also became writers. Praskovia (1828–1916), the youngest sister, was the least significant. Sofia (1824–1865) published novels and stories in several popular journals, including Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya and Otechestvennye Zapiski. Nadezhda and Sofia established a close relationship as children; as adults they formed a productive literary partnership, sharing ideas for their work.

She went on to write many successful and well regarded novels, including The Boarding School Girl (1861), which has been translated into English, and Ursa Major (1871). The Boarding School Girl was immediately popular, especially with girls and women. She was also known for her critical work, publishing articles on popular writers such as Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, and for her translations of the works of French writers, including several of George Sand's novels. Fidelity is a key theme in Khvoshchinskaya’s work; both in human relationship and in aesthetic representation. New scholarship hopes to amend that.

English translations

"On the Way: A Sketch," trans. Joe Andrew, in Russian Women's Shorter Fiction: An Anthology, 1835–1860, Clarendon Press, 1996. "After the Flood" (short story), trans. Karla Thomas Solomon, in Russian Women Writers, vol. 1, ed. Christine D. Tomei, Garland, 1999. The Boarding School Girl (novel), trans. Karen Rosneck, Northwestern University Press, 2000. The Meeting (novel). Translated by Erik McDonald, University Digital Conservancy, 2022. The Brother (novel). Translated by Nora Seligman Favorov, Oxford University Press, 2026. According to an event held by London’s Russian arts organization “Pushkin House”, there are several English translations awaiting publication. These include:

Anastassia Kostrioukova, The First Struggle (Pervaya borba, 1869).

Karen Rosneck, Ursa Major (Bolshaya medveditsa, 1870–71).