Nikolai Gogol

1809-1852. Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol was born at Sorochintsi in Ukraine, the son of a literary amateur. Following school, he moved to St. Petersburg in 1828. In 1831, he met Aleksandr Pushkin, who supported Gogol as a writer and a friend, bringing him into the literary salons of St. Petersburg. Many of Gogol's stories take place within St. Petersburg, including "The Nose." Following the the publication, and ensuing controversy, of his satirical farce, The Inspector General, in 1836, Gogol fled to Rome. Increasingly religious, Gogol spent much of his time traveling abroad in Europe. He published the first part of Dead Souls, often considered the first "modern" Russian novel, in 1842. Ten days before his death in Moscow, renoucning literature in favor of religion, he burnt what he had written of the second part of Dead Souls. Some fragments have survived.

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