The legendary Russian biography series, The Lives of Remarkable People, has played a significant role in Russian culture from its inception in 1890 until today. The longest running biography series in world literature, it spans three centuries and widely divergent political and cultural epochs: Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia. The authors argue that the treatment of biographical figures in the series is a case study for continuities and changes in Russian national identity over time. Biography in Russia and elsewhere remains a most influential literary genre and the distinctive approach and branding of the series has made it the economic engine of its publisher, Molodaia gvardiia. The centrality of biographies of major literary figures in the series reflects their heightened importance in Russian culture. The contributors examine the ways that biographies of Russia's foremost writers shaped the literary canon while mirroring the political and social realities of both the subjects' and their biographers' times. Starting with Alexander Pushkin and ending with Joseph Brodsky, the authors analyze the interplay of research and imagination in biographical narrative, the changing perceptions of what constitutes literary greatness, and the subversive possibilities of biography during eras of political censorship.

The importance of Juliusz Slowacki (1809-1849) as Poland's second greatest Romantic poet, after Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1856), is a platitude. Yet, in the English-speaking world, Slowacki receives little more than honorable mention even among students of Slavic literature. The intention of the authors of Agamemnon's Tomb: A Polish Oresteia is to focus on Slowacki's use of Antiquity in his most famous lyric, Agamemnon's Tomb, written in 1839 Since Antiquity is an essential part of the fabric of Romantic poetry, of all works of Polish Romanticism, Agamemnon's Tomb fits best into the larger framework of European Romanticism. It is grounded in the ancient and therefore universal language of the epoch probably more than any other European Romantic poem. "If I am a poet, the air of Greece has made me one," Lord Byron once remarked. What is true of Byron is equally true of Slowacki and his literary output, where antique themes and elements flow like a torrent through virtually all his works. What makes Agamemnon's Tomb unique, however, even when compared to the British or German Romantic literature, so saturated with ancient themes, is that it harnesses Antiquity as an interpretative mirror for Slowacki's understanding of the history of Poland and the Polish national character. This is the first book in English that offers the American reader a chance to encounter one of Poland's greatest poets and a work of European Romanticism at its best. It provides the Polish text with the first new full translation of the text and a stanza-by-stanza commentary that emphasizes Slowacki's debt to Greek and Roman authors.