LESKOV, NIKOLAI SEMENOVICH (1831-1895), Rus sian novelist, was born at Orel on Feb. 16, 1831, became estate agent to an Englishman who managed the estates of the Counts Perovsky, and in this way learned to know Russian village life. About 1862 he settled in St. Petersburg, where he spent most of the rest of his life. His first important novel, issued in 1864, under the pseudonym of Stebnitski, The Blind Alley, was fiercely criti cized by the radicals, as was his Ostrovityane (The Islanders). In a long series of tales and novels, he shows, says Prince Mirsky, "a greater and fuller knowledge of the Russian character and an infinitely wider range of observation than any other Russian novelist ; he knows all classes, from the very highest to the very outcasts—vagabonds, convicts, tramps." Some of his shorter tales, tragic or humorous, are masterpieces of narrative. Leskov is best known in Western Europe by translations of his Soboryane (1872; Eng. trans. by I. Hapgood, Cathedral Folk, 1924), which
contains some excellent types, but is hardly characteristic of the bulk of his work. The directness and simplicity of Leskov's stories and their orthodox and anti-revolutionary tendency account for the delay in the appreciation of them from the purely literary point of view in spite of the wide circulation of his novels during his life-time. He was for a short time a civil servant, but in spite of the accusation of reactionary views by his contemporaries, did not find himself in agreement with the government, and resigned. He died in St. Petersburg, on March 5, 1895.
Leskov's works appeared in a collected edition (12 vols., 1897). Other works of his are a novel: The Enchanted Wanderer (1873), Eng. trans. A. G. Paschkoff, 1926; and a collection of short stories, The Sentry (Eng. trans., 1922).