Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) has been described as the first Russian writer known to the Western world, and the only one with a European outlook and sympathies. He was the second son of a cavalry officer and a rich property owner, and lived in the times before and after the emancipation of serfs in Russia.
Fathers and Children was published in 1862 as
Ottsy i deti. Though it was praised by Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Joseph Conrad, and Henry James it was bitterly criticised by both Russian liberals and Slavophiles.
Constance Garnett (1861-1946) was an English translator whose translations of 70 nineteenth-century Russian classics introduced them to the English speaking public. Her work has been both highly praised and criticised. In 1895 she translated
Ottsy i deti as Fathers and Children, though later translators have used
Fathers and Sons.
The text was taken from Wikisource, and checked against the 1920 William Heineman London edition in the Internet Archive. I have silently corrected typos, curled quotation marks, replaced italics, made changes to spelling and hyphenation using oxforddictionaries.com, and expanded the List of Characters, but have omitted the lengthy introduction by Edward Garnett.
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