Sofia Soboleva

Sofia Pavlovna Soboleva (; 1840 – October 27, 1884) was a Russian writer who used the pseudonym V. Samoilovich . and 1840. While Soboleva's father was an engineer in their small town, it is possible that Soboleva had merchant relatives in Saint Petersburg by the name of Lavrov.

Soboleva remained in St. Petersburg and began publishing her works in the 1860s under the male/androgynous pseudonym V. Samoilovich. Her early story "Pros and Cons" was published in 1863 by the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski while she was working in their editorial office as an assistant. Soboleva either had children with her husband, which she was left to support after their separation, Soboleva's only novella, The Good Old Days (Dobroe staroe vremia), was published by Russkoe slovo in 1865. "Polly's Story" or "The Story of Polya" (Istoriia Poli) was published in 1866 and most recently republished in 1987 by Svidanie: proza russkikh pisatel'nits 1860–1880 godov 19-go stoletiia. Three of Soboleva's prose works, "Natasha Gordeeva," "The Surprise" (Siurpriz), and "Shmuel" were also published sometime before 1867, when Soboleva turned to writing for children. Soboleva's most notable work for children, "How Stesha Came to Petersburg" (Kak Stesha v Peterburg priekhala), was published in 1874 by Na pamiat' starogo goda: rasskazy i povesti dlia detei. In 1874, Soboleva, along with V. Sorokina, adapted Abd al-Rahman ash-Sharqawi's Arabic novel al-Fallah (The Peasant), which was published as Sketches of Contemporary Egypt (Ocherki sovremennogo Egipta. DetCh published Soboleva's Russian translation of George Eliot's English novel The Mill on the Floss in 1878. An anthology of Soboleva's work, Cherished Stories (Zavetnye rasskazy), was reprinted in 1909, twenty-five years after her death.