Nina Dyakonova
Nina Yakovlevna Dyakonova (also spelled Diakonova; ; born Magaziner; October 20, 1915, Petrograd, Russian Empire - December 9, 2013, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation) was a Russian researcher of 19th century English and European literature, full professor, Doctor of Philology, member of the Board of Directors of the International Byron Society, and member of the editorial board of the Russian academic book series "Literaturniye pamyatniki" (""). She was an authority in the history of English literature (with a special interest in English Romantic poetry (Keats, Byron, Shelley)) and links between European literatures with each other and with Russian literature, especially of the  19th century, following her professor . Biography. Born in the family of the famous Soviet lawyer Professor (1882-1961) and his wife Lydia Mikhailovna. In 1937 she graduated from the Leningrad State University, finishing the courses of two sections - linguistic and literary, and was a disciple of Professors and Viktor M. Zhirmunsky. In 1936 she married the Orientalist scholar Igor M. Dyakonov. In 1943, in the World War II evacuation from besieged Leningrad to a small town of Kyshtym, she defended her Candidate of Sciences thesis «Китс и поэты Возрождения» ("Keats and Renaissance Poets"). Since 1944 she was an assistant professor , then a full professor at the History of Foreign Literatures Department at the Faculty/School of Philology of Leningrad State University. In 1966 she defended her doctoral dissertation "Лондонские романтики и проблемы английского романтизма» ("London Romantics and the Problems of English Romanticism"), dedicated to the works of Hazlitt, Ch.Lamb, Lee Hunt and other "Londoners." Long-term friendship associated N. Ya. Dyakonova with Ye. G. Etkind and F. A. Vigdorova. Since 1985 she taught at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after Alexander Herzen (now Alexander Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University). Family. Husband. Igor Mikhailovich Dyakonov, Russian historian of the  Orient and linguist. Work. Literary scholar. The author of significant works on the writing of Shakespeare, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Dickens, Stevenson, Shaw, Huxley. Teacher. Dyakonova already joined the teaching profession as an undergraduate student: in 1934 she began to teach English to undergraduates of Oriental studies. Since then, her teaching career never interrupted for a year. Among the students of Dyakonova were dozens of candidates and doctors of science, experienced university teachers and translators of fiction (Galina S. Usova, Galina V. Yakovleva, V.E. Vetlovskaya, I.B. Komarova, Alexandr A. Chameyev, Sergey L. Sukharev, and others). The last decades of her teaching  activity were spent as a full professor at the Department of Foreign Literature of the Philological Faculty of Alexander Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University, Editor. N. Ya. Dyakonova edited translations of Byron, Lamb, Keats, Fielding, Radcliffe, De Quincey, Hazlitt, and compiled several editions of English classical literature (Kipling, Huxley, Lawrence). Two books on Byron (Bairon v gody izgnaniya (Byron in the years of exile), 1974, Liricheskaya poeziya Bairona (Byron's Lyrical Poetry), 1975) arose from a long and careful (for more than two years) editing of the translation of the poem "Don Juan" performed by Tatyana Grigorievna Gnedich . Nina Dyakonova