A talented author of tales, novels, and a travelogue, Mar'ia Zhukova was quite popular with general readers and highly regarded by critics in the 1830s and 1840s. She made a significant contribution to the development of Russian prose fiction in the period of its transition from Romanticism to Realism. Her portrayal of women and of problems specific to women's lives was noticed and taken into account by the next generation of Russian writers, including Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. One of the first women to become a professional writer in Russia, Zhukova was among the first to question the position of women in society and suggest expanding their social roles.

Possibly because of her undistinguished background (she was born into a family of small nobility), extremely little is known about Zhukova's life. Zhukova was born Mar'ia Semenova Zevakina in 1805, the eldest of five children in...