Boleslav Markevich is one of those writers who has suffered at the hands of the critics, both during his lifetime and posthumously. This situation is easily explained: possessed of definite talent but also of views considered reactionary, Markevich was a tempting target for critics of almost all persuasions and schools. He has entered the history of Russian literature as the object of his contemporaries' biting epigrams, the stooge of the editor and publisher Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov, and a harsh critic of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, on the one hand, and on the other hand as Czar Alexander III's favorite writer and an author whose novels enjoyed enormous popularity with the reading public. At the same time, Markevich's works reveal important aspects of the literary and social conditions in the second half of the nineteenth century, and as such they are worthy of interest. In addition to his novels, Markevich...