Top Quotes & Sayings by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin, born Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov and known during his lifetime by the pen name Nikolai Shchedrin, was a major Russian writer and satirist of the 19th century. He spent most of his life working as a civil servant in various capacities. After the death of poet Nikolay Nekrasov he acted as editor of the well-known Russian magazine, Otechestvenniye Zapiski, until the Tsarist government banned it in 1884. In his works Saltykov mastered both stark realism and satirical grotesque merged with fantasy. His political novel The History of a Town (1870) is regarded as a satirical masterpiece, while the novel The Golovlyov Family (1880) became one of the major works of Russian realism and 19th-century fiction.