Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote The History of a Town — the chronicle of the imaginary town of Glupov, where each governor is worse than the last. It was a history of Russia that the censorship could not ban, because on paper it was pure invention.

He was born in 1826 in Tver province. The lycée, then exile to Vyatka for his early novellas — eight years as an official in the provinces. That supplied the material.

The Golovlyov Family traces the degeneration of a gentry house. The Fairy Tales, written 'for children of a considerable age', are allegories that need no gloss. Old Years in Poshekhonye is a memoir-novel of a childhood among serfs and serf-owners.

With Nekrasov he edited Otechestvennye Zapiski. He died in 1889.