SOURCE: Introduction to The Sealed Angel and Other Stories, edited and translated by K. A. Lantz, University of Tennessee Press, 1984, pp. vii-xiii.

In the following excerpt, Lantz notes what he views as Leskov's strengths as a stylist, satirist, and storyteller, and identifies a unique Russian character in Leskov's writings.

Although Leskov has earned a sizable niche in the pantheon of Russian literature, there is still some uncertainty about where to locate it. Literary historians most commonly acknowledge him as the foremost practitioner of orally-structured narrative (skaz) and place him within a tradition of stylists who were fascinated with the language itself, beginning with the "artistic philologists" (Boris Eikhenbaum's term) such as Vladimir Dal and Alexander Weltmann and continuing into the "ornamental prose" of Alexey Remizov, Andrey Bely, and Evgeny Zamyatin in the twentieth century.

But his significance is not limited to style alone: Leskov is one of Russia's...