Dmitrii Vasil'evich Grigorovich was by all accounts a minor prose writer, a dilettante who turned to literature, as he did to the visual arts, not in response to a calling but rather in search of a noble outlet for his ideas and creativity. His position in Russian literary history nevertheless is firmly established for several reasons. Grigorovich was well-known in the contemporary intellectual and creative milieu, and he met scores of famous writers and poets, including Fyodor Dostoevsky, Afanasii Afanas'evich Fet, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov, Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov (pseudonym, Shchedrin), Alexandre Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, and Taras Shevchenko. Some of these literary giants even owed their successful debuts in Russian letters to Grigorovich. For instance, Grigorovich was the first audience for Dostoevsky's inaugural novel, Bednye liudi (Poor Folk, 1846), which, without further ado, he hand-delivered to Nekrasov, a prominent poet and the co-owner and chief...