During his life Aleksandr Vel'tman experienced both tremendous popularity and public indifference. His fall from the position of one of Russia's leading writers in the 1830s to that of a forlorn figure by the 1840s is a major feature of his literary career. He was a productive writer, a stylistic innovator who created an inimitable verbal world, and an imaginative craftsman who expanded the linguistic scope and literary forms of Russian literature. Besides writing more than fifteen novels, Vel'tman was a noted historian and ethnographer and briefly the editor of the important journal Moskvitianin (The Muscovite); he also served for more than a decade as the director of the Museum of the Kremlin's Armaments.

One reason why Vel'tman fell in popularity is that he did not change in response to changing times. As literary and social norms shifted, and as readers and critics began demanding realistic treatment and...