Largely forgotten by modern readers, Petr Dmitrievich Boborykin is remembered by historians of Russian literature chiefly for the sheer volume of his output, which apart from some twenty-six novels, more than one hundred shorter works of prose fiction, and almost thirty plays, includes full-length histories of the European novel and the modern theater; two substantial volumes of reminiscences (as well as many uncollected memoirs); essays on philosophy, psychology, aesthetics, literary theory, stagecraft, and intellectual history; and a voluminous corpus of occasional journalism. To many of his contemporaries, such prodigious productivity seemed ironically disproportionate to Boborykin's modest share of literary talent, so that the verbs boborykat' (to write immoderately and tediously--attributed to Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov [pseudonym, Shchedrin]) and oboborykinit'sia (to become dazed from a surfeit of Boborykin--coined by Petr Nikitich Tkachev) gained some currency, and "Pierre Bobo" himself became a favorite target for satirists and parodists (most notably Fyodor...