Alexander Ostrovsky created the Russian theater. Not metaphorically — literally: before him Russia had no national repertoire of its own, and its theaters made do with translated plays and vaudevilles. After him there was the Maly Theatre, for which his plays remained the foundation for decades.
He was born in Moscow in 1823, the son of a court official, in Zamoskvorechye — the Moscow of the merchant class, of trading rows and patriarchal manners. Ostrovsky knew that world through and through, and he portrayed it without flattery.
It's a Family Affair — We'll Settle It Ourselves, his first major play, was banned by the censors on a complaint from the Moscow merchantry: they had recognized themselves. The Storm, Without a Dowry, The Forest, Even a Wise Man Stumbles — nearly fifty plays in forty years, each an exact cast of its age.
He wrote so much, and so well, that his name became a synonym for Russian domestic drama. He died in 1886 on his estate, at work on a translation of Shakespeare. The unfinished manuscript lay on his desk.