o
St. John's Eve and Other Stories, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Taras Bulba,
trans. by B. C. Baskerville, London, Scott, 1907; The Inspector: a
Comedy, Calcutta, 1890; The Inspector-General, trans. by A. A. Sykes,
London, Scott, 1892; Revizor, trans. for the Yale Dramatic Association
by Max S. Mandell, New Haven, Conn., 1908; Home Life in Russia
(adaptation of Dead Souls), London, Hurst, 1854; Tchitchikoff's
Journey's; or Dead Souls, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York,
Crowell, 1886; Dead Souls, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Dead Souls, London,
Maxwell 1887; Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, trans. by L. Alexeieff,
London, A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1913.

LIVES, etc.: (Russian) Kotlyarevsky (N. A.), 1903; Shenrok (V. I.),
Materials for a Biography, 1892; (French) Leger (L.), Nicholas Gogol,
1914.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST PORTION OF THIS WORK

Second Edition published in 1846

From the Author to the Reader

Reader, whosoever or wheresoever you be, and whatsoever be your
station--whether that of a member of the higher ranks of society or that
of a member of the plainer walks of life--I beg of you, if God shall
have given you any skill in letters, and my book shall fall into your
hands, to extend to me your assistance.

For in the book which lies before you, and which, probably, you have
read in its first edition, there is portrayed a man who is a type taken
from our Russian Empire. This man travels about the Russian land and
meets with folk of every condition--from the nobly-born to the humble
toiler. Him I have taken as a type to show forth the vices and the
failings, rather than the merits and the virtues, of the commonplace
Russian individual; and the characters which revolve around him have
also been selected for the purpose of demonstrating our national
weaknesses and shortcomings. As for men and women of the better sort, I
propose to portray them in subsequent volumes. Probably much of what I
have described is improbable and does not happen as things customarily
happen in Russia; and the reason for that is that for me to learn all
that I have wished to do has been impossible, in that human life is not
sufficiently long to become acquainted with even a hundredth part
of what takes place within the borders of the Russian Empire. Also,
carelessness, inexperience, and lack of time have led to my perpetrating
numerous errors and inaccuracies of detail; with the result that in
every line of the book there is