Les Pauvres Gens
In the mid-1840s Nekrasov compiled, edited and published two influential almanacs, "The Physiology of Saint Petersburg" (1845) and "Saint Petersburg Collection" (1846), the latter featuring Fyodor Dostoyevsky's first novel, "Poor Folk". Gathering the works of several up and coming authors (Ivan Turgenev, Dmitry Grigorovich, Vladimir Dal, Ivan Panayev, Alexander Hertzen, Fyodor Dostoyevsky among them), both books were instrumental in promoting the new wave of realism in Russian literature. Several Nekrasov's poems found their way into the "First of April" compilation of humour he published in April 1846. Among the curiosities featured there was the novel "The Danger of Enjoying Vain Dreams", co-authored by Nekrasov, Grigorovich and Dostoyevsky. Among the work of fiction written by Nekrasov in those years was his unfinished autobiographical novel "The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trostnikov" (1843-1848); some of its motifs would be found later in his poetry ("The Unhappy Ones", 1856; "On the Street", 1850, "The Cabman", 1855). Part of it, the "St. Petersburg Corners", featured in the "Physiology of St. Petersburg", was treated later as an independent novelette, an exponent of the "natural school" genre.