Aleksandra Stanislavovna Shabel'skaia was a prolific writer who left behind an impressive body of prose fiction. Her narratives, mostly set in Ukrainian provinces where she spent most of her life, vividly describe life during the second half of the nineteenth century.

As with many other women writers of her era, little is known about Shabel'skaia's life. The questions begin with her name. While some historians once assumed that Shabel'skaia was her surname, most now believe that it is a pseudonym. Some scholars-- such as F. A. Brokgauz, I. A. Efron, and Stepan Ivanovich Ponomarev--have thought that her married name was "Montvid" and that her maiden name was unknown. This belief seems to be grounded in the assertion of Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov (N. Shchedrin) in an 1882 letter to Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev that Shabel'skaia was "'Monvid-Monvizh' by her husband and 'Tolochinova' by her lover." But in 1995 Ippolit Vasil'evich Zborovets' postulated...