num_pages: 403
description: Turgenev's first major prose work is a series of twenty-five Sketches: the observations and anecdotes of the author during his travels through Russia satisfying his passion for hunting. His album is filled with moving insights into the lives of those he acquaints with, peasants and landowners, doctors and bailiffs, neglected wives and bereft mothers each providing a glimpse of love, tragedy, courage and loss, and anticipating Turgenev's great later works such as First Love and Fathers and Sons. His depiction of the cruelty and arrogance of the ruling classes was considered subversive and led to his arrest and confinement to his estate, but these sketches opened the minds of contemporary readers to the plight of the peasantry and were even said to have led Tsar Alexander II to abolish serfdom.
language: English
title: Sketches from a Hunter's Album
titlecomplete: Sketches from a Hunter's Album
characters: Polutykin, Radilov, Kasyan, Foma, Yermolay
genres: Short Stories, Russia, Historical, Novels, Nature, Literature, Russian Literature, Classics, Fiction, 19th Century
ratings_count: 8215
places: Russia
publisher: Penguin Classics