Active during the high point of Russian classicism, Mikhail Dmitrievich Chulkov left his mark on a broad range of undertakings. Before his literary career began, he was involved in the opening act of the modern era of Russian drama, performing several roles in plays written by Aleksandr Sumarokov, the founder of the first permanent theater in Russia. When he took up the pen in the mid 1760s, Chulkov contributed engaging works in many genres, along the way producing several firsts in the annals of Russian literature. In 1769 he wrote "Stikhi na kacheli" (Verses on a Ferris Wheel, 1775) initiating the genre of the low burlesque poem in Russia, and his Prigozhaia povarikha, ili Pokhozhdenie razvratnoi zhenshchiny (1770; translated as "The Comely Cook, or The Adventures of a Debauched Woman," 1967), stands near the beginning of the Russian tradition of the memoir novel and remains unrivaled as the supreme parody of the...