ABSTRACT
The only work by the greatest of Russian satirists after Gogol to be at all well known in English is a novel, The Golovlyov Family. Saltykov, who took the pen-name Shchedrin, first began writing after the Crimean War when he returned from seven years’ exile in Vyatka, where Herzen had been before him. Saltykov belonged to the Petrashevsky circle like Dostoevsky but was sent away before the catastrophe in 1849. Saltykov’s theme is the decay, both material and moral, of a landowning family. The Golovlyovs, as the Russian title states, have been ‘masters’, and the story opens not long before the abolition of serfdom. Saltykov’s human insights are backed by a sure understanding of the social case. Anninka’s difficulties owe not a little to the defects in her education, which he describes as a ‘high school-light opera’ business with the stress mainly on light opera.
