FROM THE PUBLISHER

After Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41) is considered the most important Russian poet of the nineteenth century. When his only novel, A Hero of Our Time, was published in 1840, it took the public by storm. Praised as the first Russian novel of psychological realism and as a critique of the repressive times in which Lermontov lived, it brought to life the political and social ideas that at that time could only be expressed indirectly.

This latest volume in the acclaimed AATSEEL Critical Companions to Russian Literature series presents diverse perspectives of leading Slavic literary theorists and specialists, ethnologists, formalist critics, and Western humanists. Lending additional breadth and depth to the volume are reviews of the novel written at the time of its publication by both radical and conservative critics; and two new essays, one on ethnic identity and the other on women's issues in the novel. The comprehensive biography of Lermontov in Lewis Bagby's introduction tells of his difficulties with Czar Nicholas I and the government and addresses his small but significant poetic and prose output, written almost entirely in the four years before his death in a duel at age twenty-seven. As a whole, the essays provide insight into a novel that has always disturbed, challenged, and excited readers.