the women behind Russia's literary giants
- Categories
- Book/Boek
- Creator
- Popoff, Alexandra
- Publish Year
- 2012
- Shelfmark
- O. EUR 54 2012 - B
- Thesaurus
- schrijvers, partners van, huwelijken, romans, USSR, 19e eeuw, 20e eeuw
- Description
- In Russian literary marriages the wives of some of the most famous authors of all time played a vital role in the creation of some of the greatest literary works in history. From Sophia Tolstoy to Vera Nabokov, Elena Bulgakov, Nadezdha Mandelstam, Anna Dostevsky, and Natalya Solzhenitsyn, these women ranged from stenographers and typists to editors, researchers, translators, and even publishers. Living under restrictive regimes, many of these women battled censorship and preserved the writers’ illicit archives, often risking their own lives to do so. They established a tradition all their own, unmatched in the West. Many of these women were the writers’ intellectual companions and made invaluable contributions to the creative process. And their husbands knew it. Leo Tolstoy made no secret of Sofia’s involvement in War and Peace in his letters, and Vladimir Nabokov referred to Vera as his own “single shadow.”