Alexander Vasilyevich Druzhinin , (October 20, 1824 – January 31, 1864), was a Russian writer, translator, and magazine editor.

Biography

Druzhinin was born into a wealthy family in the district of Golov, part of St Petersburg province. He was educated at home until the age of sixteen, and then sent to military school. Upon graduation in 1843, he joined the Life-Guards Finland Regiment of the Russian Imperial Guard, where he was chosen as regimental librarian. In 1846 he retired from the military and took up a civil service post. He left the civil service after five years in order to devote himself entirely to literary pursuits.

From 1848 to 1855 he was the literary editor of the important journal Sovremennik

Sovremennik

Sovremennik was a Russian literary, social and political magazine, published in St. Petersburg in 1836-1866. It came out four times a year in 1836-1843 and once a month after that...

(The Contemporary). During this time he published a large number of short novels, stories, and feuilleton

Feuilleton

Feuilleton was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles...

s, translated various works of English literature into Russian and wrote a biography of the painter Pavel Fedotov

Pavel Fedotov

Pavel Andreyevich Fedotov was an amateur Russian painter known as a Russian Hogarth. He was only 37 years old when he died in a mental clinic.- Biography :...

.

In 1847 he published his most popular work, the epistolary novella Polinka Saks. He followed this up with The Story of Aleksei Dmitrich in 1848. Both were published in Sovremennik, and received praise from the prominent critic Vissarion Belinsky

Vissarion Belinsky

Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency. He was an associate of Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin , and other critical intellectuals...

. Ater the death of Belinsky in 1848, Druzhinin and Pavel Annenkov

Pavel Annenkov

Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov was a significant Russian literary critic and memoirist.-Biography:Annenkov was born into a wealthy landowning family in Moscow. He attended the philological faculty of St Petersburg University...

 became Russia's most prominent critics.

After he left Sovremennik, he edited the journal The Library for Reading, where he espoused a conservative view of literature, denying that it should be subordinated to social and political aims, which was the approach advocated by Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, the ideological voices of Sovremennik. Druzhinin became one of the chief proponents of the aesthetic movement

Aestheticism

Aestheticism was a 19th century European art movement that emphasized aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design...

 in Russian literature, along with Pavel Annenkov

Pavel Annenkov

Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov was a significant Russian literary critic and memoirist.-Biography:Annenkov was born into a wealthy landowning family in Moscow. He attended the philological faculty of St Petersburg University...

 and Vasily Botkin

Vasily Botkin

Vasily Petrovich Botkin was a Russian essayist, literary, art and music critic, translator and publicist.-Early life:Vasily was the son of a wealthy merchant and the brother of the well known physician Sergey Botkin...

.

Druzhinin was also the major initiator of the Literary Fund, an organization whose purpose was to give financial assistance to needy writers. Fyodor Dostoyevsky served as secretary to the fund between 1863 and 1865. Dostoyevsky also participated with Druzhinin in fundraising for the organization.

Druzhinin was on friendly terms with many of his more famous contemporaries, including Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

, Alexander Ostrovsky, and Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...

, whom he exchanged letters with.

He died of tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 in 1864, and was buried in Volkovo Cemetery

Volkovo Cemetery

The Volkovo Cemetery , is one of the largest and oldest non- Orthodox cemeteries in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Until the early 20th century it was one of the main burial grounds for Lutheran Germans in Russia...

 in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

.

English literature

Druzhinin worked hard to acquaint Russian readers with English literature. He translated three of Shakespeare's plays; King Lear

King Lear

King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...

, Coriolanus

Coriolanus

Gaius Marcius Coriolanus was a Roman general who is said to have lived in the 5th century BC. He received his toponymic cognomen "Coriolanus" because of his exceptional valor in a Roman siege of the Volscian city of Corioli. He was then promoted to a general...

 and Richard III

Richard III (play)

Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1591. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified...

; he published a series of essays entitled Boswell

James Boswell

James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....

 and Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

, about English life in the eighteenth century; and he wrote a life of George Crabbe

George Crabbe

George Crabbe was an English poet and naturalist.-Biography:He was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the son of a tax collector, and developed his love of poetry as a child. In 1768, he was apprenticed to a local doctor, who taught him little, and in 1771 he changed masters and moved to Woodbridge...

which included numerous extracts from his poetry.

Works

• Polinka Saks, and The Story of Aleksei Dmitrich, Translated by Michael R. Katz, Northwestern University Press, 1992. ISBN 0810110520

Sources