Fedor Aleksandrovich Emin earned his place in literary history as Russia's first novelist. The distinction holds true not only in the literal sense that Emin published the first original novel written in the Russian language; he also brought the genre to Russia in a social and economic sense. From the middle of the eighteenth century in western Europe, the novel existed as a literary genre that presented recognizable descriptions of everyday life and more or less believable characters; these elements appeared in the novel and journalism at roughly the same time. Emin brought Russian novelistic prose close to journalistic discourse, in that his novels included much factual information and what today would be called editorial opinion. The novel as an object to be purchased and read privately at home also introduced new patterns of literary consumption; in this sense Emin presided over the commodification of Russian prose fiction...