Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky

Vasilii Zhukovsky is perhaps the most important Russian literary figure in the pre-Pushkinian era. He was born on 29^th January (9^th February, New Style) 1783 in the village of Mishenskoe in the Belev district of Tula province. He was the illegitimate son of a landlord, Afanasii Ivanovich Bunin, and a Turkish woman named Sal’kha, who had been captured at the siege of Bender in 1770 (the name and nationality of his mother is omitted from at least one Soviet account, presumably for nationalistic or puritanical reasons). He was brought up by a poor landowner, Andrei Grigor’evich Zhukovsky, who lived in Bunin’s household. Bunin lost six of his eleven legitimate children, including his only son, and when he