Historical Fiction Turgenev, Ivan: Virgin Soil. v1 18 Jan 2018

[AlexBell]

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 lived in the times before and after the emancipation of serfs in Russia, and went into voluntary exile in 1855.

Ashton Wentworth Dilke (1850-1883) was a British traveller, journalist, and politician. He lived in Russia for several months, published a translation of Virgin Soil in 1878, and died in Mauritius of tuberculosis.

Virgin Soil was published in 1877 while Turgenev was in exile, and was his last novel. It is set in the period shortly after the emancipation of serfs in Russia, and deals with the reaction of the aristocracy and of some of the growing middle class. There are few peasant characters.

This edition was published by Macmillan and Co in 1878. The text was taken from and checked against that version on the Internet Archive. I have silently corrected typos, and made changes to spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation using oxforddictionaries.com.

Most Russian aristocrats of the time were fluent in French, and often spoke French between themselves so that their servants and serfs would not understand them. I have not translated the French in this version, but have included the translator's footnotes as endnotes.

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