Alexander Pushkin

Who is Alexander Pushkin?

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799 into an old noble family and is widely regarded as the founder of modern Russian literature and the greatest Russian poet. Educated at the prestigious Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo, he began publishing verse as a teenager. His work spans lyric poetry, narrative poems, drama and prose, and he forged a literary Russian language that fused colloquial speech with high style. Among his masterpieces are the verse novel 'Eugene Onegin,' the historical drama 'Boris Godunov,' the narrative poem 'The Bronze Horseman,' and the prose tales 'The Captain's Daughter' and 'The Queen of Spades.' His political verse led to periods of exile in the south of Russia and on his family estate. Pushkin died in 1837 at the age of 37 from wounds sustained in a duel with Georges d'Anthès, a death that shocked Russian society and cemented his near-mythic status. His influence on later writers, from Dostoevsky to Nabokov, is immense.

Sources: Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (1833) · T. J. Binyon, Pushkin: A Biography (2002) · Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry 'Aleksandr Pushkin'