Lidiia Zinov'eva-Annibal was a writer primarily of prose fiction and dramatic works. She also played a key role in the cultural life of the Russian Silver Age as the wife of Viacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov. Zinov'eva-Annibal and Ivanov hosted an important literary-philosophical salon at their "Tower" apartment in St. Petersburg. Her own literary work was heavily influenced by her husband's religious and poetical searching. While much of her earlier writing is highly derivative, the cycle of short stories published in the last year of her life, Tragicheskii zverinets (1907; translated as The Tragic Menagerie, 1999), received high critical acclaim and is of considerable literary value.

Zinov'eva-Annibal was born Lidiia Dmitrievna Zinov'eva in 1866 (according to some accounts, her date of birth is 6 October 1865) in St. Petersburg to a family with high connections. On her mother's side she was a distant relative of Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin; from this association Zinov'eva later took the...