Excellent! I read this many years ago and didn't know the history. Thank you for providing it, Roy. I'll reread it soon. Although this makes me realize one of the pitfalls of ebook readers - people can't easily see what it is that you're reading. I remember turning quite a few heads one week as people saw me reading this in graduate school. The author's name, the title, and the cover art of the Penguin Classics paperback (a detail from "Procession in the Province of Kursk" by I. E. Repin) all tended to catch people's attention. It made me chuckle.
