era dawned on
Russian literature, the Era of the Great Reforms. The Crimean War and
the reforms which followed it--the emancipation of the serfs, the
creation of a new judicial system, and the foundation of local
self-government--stabbed the Russian soul into life, relieved it of
its gag, produced a great outburst of literature which enlarged and
enriched the literature of the world, and gave to the world three of
its greatest novelists: Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky.

IVAN TURGENEV (1816-83), whose name is of Tartar origin, came of an
old family which had frequently distinguished itself in the annals of
Russian literature by a fearless outspokenness. He began his literary
career by writing verse (1843); but, like Maupassant, he soon
understood that verse was not his true vehicle, and in 1847 gave up
writing verse altogether; in that year he published in _The
Contemporary_ his first sketch of peasant life, _Khor and Kalinych_,
which afterwards formed part of his _Sportsman's Sketches_,
twenty-four of which he collected and published in 1852. The
Government rendered Turgenev the same service as it had done to
Pushkin, in exiling him to his own country estate for two years. When,
after the two years, this forced exile came to an end, he went into
another kind of exile of his own accord; he lived at first at Baden,
and then in Paris, and only reappeared in Russia from time to time;
this accounts for the fact that, although Turgenev belongs
chronologically to the epoch of the great reforms, the Russia which he
paints was really more like the Russia before that epoch; and when he
tried to paint the Russia that was contemporary to him his work gave
rise to much controversy.

His _Rudin_ was published in 1856, _The Nest of Gentlefolk_ in 1859,
_On the Eve_ in 1860, _Fathers and Sons_ in 1862, _Smoke_ in 1867.
Turgenev did for Russian literature what Byron did for English
literature; he led the genius of Russia on a pilgrimage throughout all
Europe. And in Europe his work reaped a glorious harvest of praise.
Flaubert was astounded by him, George Sand looked up to him as to a
Master, Taine spoke of his work as being the finest artistic
production since Sophocles. In Turgenev's work, Europe not only
discovered Turgenev, but it discovered Russia, the simplicity and the
naturalness of the Russian character; and this came as a revelation.
For the first time, Europe came across the Russian woman whom Pushkin
was the first to