Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky

Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Остро́вский; 12 April [O.S. 31 March] 1823 – 14 June [O.S. 2 June] 1886) was a Russian playwright, generally considered the greatest representative of the Russian realistic period. The author of 47 original plays, Ostrovsky "almost single-handedly created a Russian national repertoire." His dramas are among the most widely read and frequently performed stage pieces in Russia.

Early years

Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky was born on 12 April 1823, in the Zamoskvorechye region of Moscow, to Nikolai Fyodorovich Ostrovsky, a lawyer who had received a seminary education. Nikolai's ancestors came from the village Ostrov in the Nerekhta region of the Kostroma Governorate (north-east of Moscow), hence their surname. Later Nikolai Ostrovsky became a high-ranking state official and as such in 1839 received a title of nobility with corresponding privileges. His first wife (Alexander's mother), Lyubov Ivanovna Savvina, came from a clergyman's family. For some time the family lived in a rented flat in the Zamoskvorechye. Then Nikolai Fyodorovich bought a plot of land in Monetchiki and built a house on it. In the early 1826 the family moved there.

Alexander had three siblings, sister Natalya, and brothers Mikhail and Sergey. The former was his major companion in their childhood years, and from her and her girl-friends the boy learned such unmanly things as sewing and knitting. Nanny Avdotya Kutuzova played an important role in his upbringing too. Ostrovsky insisted that the fairy-tales she told him inspired one of his most popular plays, The Snow Maiden.