3-074-542 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late Ivan Tourguenieff, Russian novelist, 1883. Engraving from a photograph by Nadar, of Paris. 'The death of this Russian author, an undoubted man of genius...took place last week at Bougival...in the neighbourhood of Paris. He had lived out of Russia...during the past twenty years...He was appointed to an office in the Ministry of the Interior; but, having adopted Liberal opinions, soon incurred the displeasure of the Government...An article which he wrote upon Gogol, the literary satirist of Russian aristocratic and official corruption, brought...a criminal prosecution in 1847, resulting in a brief imprisonment and banishment from the capital for two years. After the Crimean War, he lived chiefly in France or in Germany, and showed himself, in numerous writings, the advocate of political reforms more consonant with the spirit of the party of progress in Western Europe than with that of the fanatical and exclusive Muscovite party in Russia...he has exposed the vices of Russian civil administration, and the conflict of class interests, with unsparing severity. He was one of the first to discern...the rise of "Nihilism," the anti-social or anti-civil conspiracy...whose secret plots of assassination have shocked the whole civilised world'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.