This book is a major critical biography of the poet Maria Tsvetaeva by one of the foremost authorities on her work. It draws on a profusion of recent documentation and research, some of it hitherto unpublished, and encompasses the whole course of her life. Professor Karlinsky is careful to supply the reader with the necessary context for understanding the work by setting out the historical, political and literary background against which Tsvetaeva's life and literary development evolved. A particular feature of the book is a discussion of Tsvetaeva's relationships with her literary contemporaries, especially Mandelstam, Rilke, Akhmatova, Pasternak, and Mayakovsky, and of her emotional involvement with various men and women that are reflected in her poetry, plays and prose. Interest in Tsvetaeva's work has grown considerably and this important book will be essential reading both to scholars of twentieth-century Russian literature and cultural studies and to all serious students of modern literature.

Through careful textual readings of Gogol's most famous works, Karlinsky argues that Gogol's homosexual orientation--which Gogol himself could not accept or forgive in himself--may provide the missing key to the riddle of Gogol's personality.
"A brilliant new biography that will long be prized for its illuminating psychological insights into Gogol's actions, its informative readings of his fiction and drama, and its own stylistic grace and vivacity."--Edmund White, "Washington Post Book World"

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

Simon Karlinsky has substantially expanded and revised the first edition of Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson's correspondence to include fifty-nine letters discovered subsequent to the book's original publication in 1979. Since then, five volumes of Edmund Wilson's diaries have been published, as well as a volume of Nabokov's correspondence with other people and Brian Boyd's definitive two-volume biography of Nabokov. The additional letters and a considerable body of new annotations clarify the correspondence, tracing in greater detail the two decades of close friendship between the writers.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971.

guide the Symbolist movement which dominated Russian literature for the first third of the twentieth century. A major poet, important playwright, and influential literary critic, she was also a sexual rebel who rejected traditional male/female roles as early as the 1890s. Vladimir Zlobin, her secretary and factotum from the time of her emigration to Paris after the revolution until her death in 1945, exposes the consequential inner workings of the literary circle around Gippius. His account of her three most important personal involvements--with her husband, the novelist and critic Dmitry Merezhkovsky; with the unattainable love of her life, the critic Dmitry Filosofov; and with the Devil, with whom she believed herself in personal contact--facilitates the task of understanding this truly "difficult soul." Himself a poet, Zlobin also offeres a detailed commentary on her poetry, and persuasively connects it to her personal and mystical experiences. In Karlinsky's perceptive introduction, Gippius emerges not only as one of the principals in the Modernist renascence of Russian poetry between 1890 and 1930, but as a figure of considerable historical interest, whose views, life, and work stand in significant relation to the major social, sexual, religious, and political currents of her time. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980. 

guide the Symbolist movement which dominated Russian literature for the first third of the twentieth century. A major poet, important playwright, and influential literary critic, she was also a sexual rebel who rejected traditional male/female roles as early as the 1890s. Vladimir Zlobin, her secretary and factotum from the time of her emigration to Paris after the revolution until her death in 1945, exposes the consequential inner workings of the literary circle around Gippius. His account of her three most important personal involvements--with her husband, the novelist and critic Dmitry Merezhkovsky; with the unattainable love of her life, the critic Dmitry Filosofov; and with the Devil, with whom she believed herself in personal contact--facilitates the task of understanding this truly "difficult soul." Himself a poet, Zlobin also offeres a detailed commentary on her poetry, and persuasively connects it to her personal and mystical experiences. In Karlinsky's perceptive introduction, Gippius emerges not only as one of the principals in the Modernist renascence of Russian poetry between 1890 and 1930, but as a figure of considerable historical interest, whose views, life, and work stand in significant relation to the major social, sexual, religious, and political currents of her time. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980. 

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971.