Although the stories which she has written for young people do not have a contemporary setting, E. M. Almedingen does manage to convey the sense of spaciousness, the richness of tradition and the mixed character of the Russian people which are still as true of the country as they were before 1917. Even though the political system was very different in the days of which she writes in most of her books, they may nevertheless help to understand the way of life in Eastern Europe….

[She] was an expert on Russian history and many of her books reflect this fact. (p. 301)

The Poltoratzkys represent E. M. Almedingen's maternal relations. Catherine von Almedingen, the heroine of Little Katia, was a great aunt on her father's side; this book is a rewriting of Catherine's own story published in Russia in 1874 as The Story of a Little Girl, which established Catherine's reputation as a leading children's author. This, like all the stories previously mentioned, is written in the first person.

Frossia is the only one of these stories written in the third person and this alone does not purport to be fiction based on fact. Frossia, however, is of the same age and generation as E. M. Almedingen herself, and lives through the days immediately after the 1917 Revolution, determined to survive and inspired by love of her country despite the changed political situation…. She describes how she grew up, devoted to her native city, and how, in spite of the poverty in which she and her mother lived …, she considered herself 'rich because I had St Petersburg'. Reading Frossia immediately after this autobiographical account of life before 1917, it is impossible to disassociate the two central characters—they have so much in common.

E. M. Almedingen allows her own love of St Petersburg to be reflected in Frossia…. Her dealings with bureaucracy are a good introduction to the way things still operate in the USSR.

In many ways Frossia … is the best. The fact that it is written in the third person means that the author can range widely—we are not restricted to scenes and incidents where Frossia herself is present…. Frossia, with her gift for learning languages, is very much a heroine in the tradition of the author's ancestresses. (pp. 302-03)

Anna, Ellen and Fanny; the last three to be published, are longer and more demanding; they are most likely to appeal to girls in their teens, since, although the heroines all describe incidents of early childhood …, they dwell much more on the problems of growing up and adapting to the adult world. Older girls will also enjoy fitting the stories together and will gain some sense of historical perspective from doing so. Anna is the kind of heroine with whom many girls will like to identify; she is extremely learned, capable and energetic; before she marries (at sixteen!) she has learnt six languages, but there are plenty of reminders that she is living in an earlier age….

Ellen and Fanny, as well as Catherine Almedingen, had the urge to write. Their descendant has made good use of the rich material they left in their memoirs, and the panorama which she has woven out of their jottings and out of her own experience gives to the reader some understanding of why the USSR is the country which it is today. (p. 303)