SOURCE: Cooper, Nancy. “A Chapter in the History of Russian Autobiography: Childhood, Youth, and Maturity in Fonvizin's Chistoserdechnoe priznanie v delakh moikh i pomyshleniiakh (A Sincere Anowal of My Deeds and Thoughts).” Slavic and East European Journal 40, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 609-22.

In the following essay, Cooper examines Fonvizin's unfinished autobiographical essay A Sincere Avowal, exploring its depiction of childhood.

Denis Fonvizin's Chistoserdechnoe priznanie v delakh moikh i pomyshleniiakh (A Sincere Avowal of My Deeds and Thoughts), written during the last years of his life and left unfinished at his death in 1792, is not only one of the very first autobiographical works in Russian to treat the topic of childhood in any detail, but it is also a very early example of a Russian autobiography concerned with the evolution of the subject's career as a writer.¹ It was unusual for its time in that it was apparently intended by its...