Pyotr Boborykin

Pyotr Dmitriyevich Boborykin (Russian: Пётр Дми́триевич Боборы́кин; 27 August [O.S. 15 August] 1836 – 12 August 1921) was a Russian writer, playwright, and journalist.

Biography

Boborykin was born into the family of a landowner. He studied at Kazan State University and the Dorpat University, but he never completed his education. He made his debut as a playwright in 1860. In 1863–1864 he published an autobiographical novel, The Pathway. He was the editor-publisher of the journal Library for Reading (1863–1865), worked for the theatre magazine Russian Stage,¹ and was "Paris correspondent of several Russian newspapers".² He spent a long period abroad in the 1890s, where he met Émile Zola, Edmond de Goncourt and Alphonse Daudet. In 1900 he was elected an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

He married Sophia Zborzhevskaya or Zborzewska (1845-1925), an actress and translator, in 1872. He died in 1921, in Switzerland.

Works

Boborykin worked on the journals Notes of the Fatherland, The European Herald, The Northern Herald, Russian Thought, Artist and other publications. He was the author of numerous novels, novellas, short stories,³ plays, and works on the history of Western European and Russian literature.⁴ His most famous works were the novels Evening Sacrifice (1868), Dealers (1872–1873), Half a Life (1873), (1882), (1892), (1898), the story (1890), and the comedy (1899). His great volume of writing was mocked by his peers; "Few writers have taken themselves more seriously, yet few have attracted more ridicule and ribaldry from their contemporaries."