Nikolai Nekrasov made a contribution to nineteenth-century Russian literature that was distinctly varied. He was both one of the leading publishers of his day and one of its foremost writers. Over the course of some three decades he edited two journals--Sovremennik (The Contemporary) from 1847 until 1866, and then Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland) from 1868 until his death in 1877--and he succeeded in turning first one and then the other into the most progressive monthly publications in tsarist Russia. His work on the journals brought him into close contact with virtually every major figure in the literary world during his lifetime, and he was able to persuade most of these writers to allow him to be the first to publish at least some of their works.

At the same time, Nekrasov earned for himself the reputation of the first narodnyi poet (poet of the people) and arguably the...