GONTCHA.ROFF, giin'cha-r5r, Iviuv ALEX ANDROVITCH (1S12-91). A Russian novelist. He was born at Simbiesk, of a very wealthy family. At ten he was sent to school at Moscow, and visited his native place only during vacations. In 1831-34 he finished his philological studies at the university, spent a year at his native town, and in 1835 accepted a position in the Ministry of Finance. His transformation from romanti cism to realism was embodied in his A Common ,Story (1847), which had a great success. In 1856 57 he published the Frigate Pallas, a collection of letters describing his two and one-half years' journey around the world in the capacity of sec retary to Admiral Putyatin, who had been sent to Japan to conclude a commercial treaty. In 1858 he wrote Oblomoff, and a little later was appointed to a position in the Department of Censorship; then he became editor of the official organ, the Northern Post, and retired in 1873 with a pension. In 1868 his Precipice appeared in
the Messenger of Europe, and greatly aroused the public and critics by the caricature of Young Russia in the dissolute Volokhoff. His later short sketches and critical essays, the most strik ing of which is A Million power ful analysis of The Misfortune of Being Too Clever by Griboyedoff (q.v.) —added little to the fame of the author of Oblomoff. Oblomo vism, or Oblomovshtina, has become a byword for the pan-Russian inertia which renders the hero incapable of any action. The power of generalization reached here by the author sur passes everything of the kind in Russian litera ture. Gontcharoff's work The Precipice has been published in German, under the title Der Ab sturz, in Reclam's Universalbibliothek.