Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich
Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich ( 1809 – 52 ),Russian prose writer and dramatist. Born in the Ukraine, which he used as a setting for his early writings, he left for St Petersburg in 1828 . His first collection of stories, Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, appeared in 1831 – 2 . His collections Mirgorod and Arabesques ( 1835 ) were followed by the play The Government Inspector (or The Inspector-General) ( 1836 ), a savagely satirical picture of life in a provincial Russian town. His brilliant St Petersburg stories, ‘Nevsky Prospekt’ ( 1835 ), ‘Notes of a Madman’ ( 1835 ), ‘The Portrait’ ( 1835 ), ‘The Nose’ ( 1836 ), and ‘The Greatcoat’ ( 1842 ), are set in a mad city where nothing is what it seems. From 1836 to 1848 Gogol lived mainly abroad, spending most of his time in Rome. During this period he was at work on his masterpiece, the comic epic Dead Souls;...
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