The Collected Stories: Alexander Pushkin (Everyman's Library CLASSICS)

The translation (originally published by Stanford University Press in the 80s) was produced by a much-loved and respected Hungarian Pushkin scholar, Paul Debreczeny, who passed away some years ago. So it is surely 'authoritative' in the sense of being faithful and reliable. From a literary point of view, though, it really doesn't work in the way that, say, Rosemary Edmonds' or the Pevear-Volkhonsky translations do. With phrases like "the idea of relinquishing trivial and dubious anecdotes in favour of relating true and great events had long been stirring my imagination", "having sufficiently acquainted myself with these precious memorabilia..." , "everybody envied the accord reigning between the haughty Troekurov and his poor neighbor..." etc., the spirit and vivacity of the text (there must be some!) unfortunately does not come through. Content-wise, the stories don't seem to carry the truth or the poetry of Chekhov or Turgenev or Gogol or Gorky - but that's a question of taste...

Interesting collection but as a fan of Russian literature give me a good insight into the history of Russian literature.If you are interested in Russsian literature, as wel as this time period, buy this book. The translation is also superb.

I like it

I'm glad I read this. There are some excellent stories in the collection, although not all are up to the same standard, and you can see how Pushkin had such a major influence on the great Russian writers who followed him.I think that readers might like to know in advance that a couple of the major stories in the collection are, in fact, unfinished works, specifically 'The Blackamoor of Peter the Great' and 'Dubrovskii'. Both stories are well worth reading but I think that the Publisher should have included a note in the text, just a sentence at the end of the story perhaps, to let readers know that they were not completed, since readers may otherwise be left wondering why the stories terminated rather abruptly.I particularly liked the longest story, 'The Captain's Daughter'. Without giving plot details, this is a fictional story set within the context of real historical events (The Pugachev Rebellion). I found it a very gripping story, and it reminded me very much of 'War and Peace', which is praise indeed. I noticed that the ending bore an uncanny resemblance to the ending of Walter Scott's 'Heart of Midlothian'. Perhaps this was Pushkin's tribute to Scott; I don't know. The collection also includes Pushkin's History of the Pugachev Rebellion, though I'm afraid that I skipped that.

A great book.

useful collection of tales

The occasional dud story (to be expected in any author) aside, this collection of work is rich in the imagery of life amongst the upper classes of early 19th century Russia and gives an evocative sense of the opulence if the aristocratic life juxtaposed to the frequent indignities those same Aristocrats heaped upon their Serfs during the sometime fanciful or downright odd drama's into which Pushkin places the characters in his stories.particularly recommended is the story of Dubrovski, and 'The Blackamore of Peter The Great'.N.B. one weaknesses of Pushkins stories, seems to be his inability to actually end a story. A story can frequently be clipping along at a great pace, only for the story to end in the most sudden a d unsatisfactory manner - almost as if the author became boars if lost his train of thought

every page of this edition is a gem,I would recomend anyone to start with an everyman edition, the print is large and easy to read, the introductions are fun to read and not at all dry,the text is adictive and you get with this edition a history of the times the book was written and a cronology of the auther.