The fiction of Sergei Sergeev-Tsensky, one of the most prolific Russian writers of the twentieth century, is mostly forgotten today. Although Sergeev-Tsensky was regarded as a classic prose writer during his own lifetime, he is remembered mostly for his historical novels about the Crimean War and World War I. The literary output of Sergeev-Tsensky was enormous. He was probably the only twentieth-century Russian writer who wrote extensively in all prose genres and produced volumes of poetry as well.

He was born Sergei Nikolaevich Sergeev on 18 September 1875 in the village Babino (Preobrazhenskoe) in the Tambov district, Tambov province. Sergeev's father, Nikolai Sergeevich Sergeev, served in the Crimean War of 1853-1856 as a commissioned officer and later worked as a provincial schoolteacher. Sergeev learned to read at the age of five, and by the age of eight he wrote his first poem, "Solovei" (Nightingale), which he later included in his...