Nadezhda Dmitryevna Khvoshchinskaya , May 20, 1824 – June 8, 1889, was a Russian novelist, poet, literary critic and translator. Her married name was Zayonchkovskaya. She published much of her work under the pseudonym V. Krestovsky. She later added "alias" to her pseudonym to avoid being confused with the writer Vsevolod Krestovsky

Vsevolod Krestovsky

Vsevolod Vladimirovich Krestovsky , February 23, 1840 – January 30, 1895, was a Russian writer.-Biography:Krestovsky came from an old family of Ukrainian gentry. In 1857 he enrolled in the Historico-Philological faculty of St Petersburg University...

.

Early life

Nadezhda was born into a gentry family in the province of Ryazan

Ryazan Oblast

Ryazan Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the city of Ryazan, which is the oblast's largest city. Population: -Geography:...

, where her father held a civil service post until being dismissed due to accusations of embezzlement of government funds. The legal proceedings that followed deprived him of a large sum of money, and forced him to sell off his property. It took him ten years to prove his innocence, while the family sank into poverty. Because of poor health and lack of money, Nadezhda received most of her education at home from private tutors, attending a boarding school only for a short time between the ages of eleven and twelve.

Nadezhda was the youngest of five children, having a brother and three sisters. Two of her younger sisters, Sofia and Praskovia, also became writers. Praskovia (1832–1916), the youngest sister, was the least significant. Sofia (1828–1865) published novels and stories in several popular journals, including The Reader's Library and Notes of the Fatherland

Otechestvennye Zapiski

Otechestvennye Zapiski was a Russian literary magazine published in St Petersburg on a monthly basis between 1818 and 1884. The journal served liberal-minded readers, known as the intelligentsia...

. Nadezhda and Sofia established a close relationship as children; as adults they formed a productive literary partnership, sharing ideas for present and future work.

Career

Nadezhda began writing for intellectual and artistic satisfaction and as a way to relieve the family's impoverished condition. She published her first poems in 1842, when she was eighteen years old. She wrote over one hundred poems in her lifetime, most of which were never published. Her first novel, Anna Mikhailovna (1850) was published in Notes of the Fatherland, under the pen name V. Krestovsky. She was a prolific writer, publishing many novels and stories in Notes of the Fatherland, The Contemporary

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...

and other journals.

After the death of her father in 1856, Nadezhda provided a majority of the financial support for her mother, her sisters and eventually her late brother's children. She was often stressed and overworked, and suffered from various health problems which were made worse by progressive scoliosis

Scoliosis

Scoliosis is a medical condition in which a person's spine is curved from side to side. Although it is a complex three-dimensional deformity, on an X-ray, viewed from the rear, the spine of an individual with scoliosis may look more like an "S" or a "C" than a straight line...

, and by the early death of her sister Sofia, with whom she was especially close. Soon after Sofia's death Nadezhda married a young doctor and former political exile named Zayonchkovsky, who was fourteen years younger than her. The marriage wasn't a happy one due to significant differences in their social views. Her husband died in 1872 from tuberculosis that had been worsened by his time in exile.

She went on to write many successful and well regarded novels, including The Boarding School Girl (1861), which has been translated into English, and Ursa Major (1871). The Boarding School Girl was immediately popular, especially with girls and women. She was also known for her critical work, publishing articles on popular writers such as Ivan Goncharov

Ivan Goncharov

Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov was a Russian novelist best known as the author of Oblomov .- Biography :Ivan Goncharov was born in Simbirsk ; his father was a wealthy grain merchant and respected official who was elected mayor of Simbirsk several times...

, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin , better known by his pseudonym Shchedrin , was a major Russian satirist of the 19th century. At one time, after the death of the poet Nikolai Nekrasov, he acted as editor of the well-known Russian magazine, the Otechestvenniye Zapiski, until it was banned by...

 and Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy

Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy

Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, often referred to as A. K. Tolstoy , was a Russian poet, novelist and playwright, considered to be the most important nineteenth-century Russian historical dramatist...

, and for her translations of the works of French writers, including several of George Sand's

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

 novels. Her fictional works often show the influence of democratic writers like Nikolay Chernyshevsky and his circle.

Later life

She spent most of her life in Ryazan, only visiting her friends in St. Petersburg once or twice a year. Among these friends were writers and poets like 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...

 and Nikolay Sherbina

Nikolay Sherbina

Nikolay Fyodorovich Shcherbina - Russian poet of 19th century.Nikolay Shcherbina was born on December 2, 1821 in Mius district of Don Cossack Host in the mansion of his mother. His father was of Ukrainian descent, and his mother of Greek descent. The parents of Shcherbina moved into the city of...

. After her mother's death in 1884, she moved to St. Petersburg. She died at a summer cottage in Petergof, outside St. Petersburg, in 1889.

English translations

• The Boarding School Girl, (Novel), Northwestern University Press, 2000.