The Reception of Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov in Victorian Britain

Abstract

The topic for this thesis was chosen with two points in mind. Firstly, it was felt that, in the field of Anglo-Russian literary relations, the impact of the writings of Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov on the British reading public had not been sufficiently studied. In researches previously conducted into the reception of Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev and other writers, Lermontov is hardly mentioned save in connection with the travesty made of his novel Geroy nashego vremeni in 1853. Secondly, there are only incomplete bibliographies of the English translations of Lermontov's works, and of English critical writings. The most recent one was compiled in 1942 by Anna Heifetz (Lermontov in English, New York Public Library). Her list covered two hundred and nine items, naming translations and critical works in England and America, from the 1840s, when Lermontov was first mentioned on both sides of the Atlantic, to 1941, the centenary of the poet's death. Many important items were, however, missing from the bibliography.