Aleksei Pleshcheev made his livelihood as a writer for more than forty years. He was a teenager at the time of his first publications, and he was in his late sixties at the time of his last. His long career stretched from the time of Tsar Nicholas I into the reign of Tsar Alexander III, marking the end of the era of wellborn cultural amateurs and the beginning of a new era of cultural professionalism. Pleshcheev was a journalist and publisher; he also wrote poetry, short stories, and plays and was a pioneer in the writing of children's literature in Russia. He published translations from German, French, and English literature that are consulted to this day. The civic themes of Pleshcheev's writings were matched by an active civic life, all in the defense of his chosen profession--literature. Pleshcheev extolled, perhaps even exaggerated, the virtues and pleasures of an...