Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol was a writer of the Russian Empire who was born in 1809 in Velyki Sorochyntsi, in what is now Ukraine, and died in 1852. He grew up among Ukrainian villages, folk tales and Cossack stories, and these shaped his early work. He moved to St Petersburg as a young man, worked briefly as a civil servant, and soon found success as a writer.

Gogol is remembered for comic, strange and sharply observed prose and drama. He wrote about small officials, swindlers, landowners and dreamers, mixing humour with unease and the fantastic with everyday detail. His novel Dead Souls and his play The Government Inspector mocked human vanity and the failings of society. Later Russian writers owed him a great deal, and his short stories helped shape the Russian realist tradition. His last years were troubled by religious anxiety and poor health.