Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799 and is widely regarded as the founder of modern Russian literature. He grew up in a noble family that valued French culture, yet he came to shape a Russian literary language that was flexible, clear and lively. His early poetry brought him fame, and his liberal sympathies led to exile from the capital under Tsar Alexander I, and later to close official supervision.

He wrote lyric poems, narrative poems, plays, fairy tales and prose fiction, and his verse novel Eugene Onegin remains his best-known work. Later writers such as Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy built on what he had achieved. Pushkin died in January 1837 in St Petersburg after a duel, aged only 37. In Russia he is still loved as a national poet, and his work has inspired many operas, ballets and songs.