Of all the classic novelists of Russia’s nineteenth century, Turgenev is considered to be the one most readily accessible to the western reader. Not only did he spend much of his life in Western Europe – in Germany and later in France, but he also had close connections with Flaubert in Paris, as well as with Zola, Edmond de Goncourt and Daudet. Turgenev championed their works in Russia and, as well as more informal contacts, they met as a group dining together once a month. In terms of his social and artistic milieu, Turgenev could almost be categorised as a French writer.

Turgenev also had English connections, principally through his translator, William Ralston. The idea for his novel Ottsy i deti [

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