Anna Pavlovna Barykova is a name unfamiliar even to most scholars of Russian literature. Her poetry was well regarded by some during her lifetime, derided by others as a poetry of low life and poverty--clearly a problem in a Russian culture steeped in the Romantic ethos of the poet as a leader of society who points the reader toward the beautiful and sublime. Barykova's poetry tends toward social critique. It unflinchingly identifies the flaws in the Russian Empire of the late 1800s and sympathizes with the plight of those who have no voice. Her goal was to advance progressive revolutionary causes through her work--a fact that made her best-known poem, Skazka pro to, kak Tsar' Akhreian khodil Bogu zhalovat'sia (1883; translated as "The Tale of How Tsar Akhreian Went to God to Complain," 1999), illegal in the empire.

Barykova was born Anna Pavlovna Kamenskaia on 22 December 1839 in St. Petersburg. She...