Vasilii Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko

Vasily Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko (Russian: Васи́лий Ива́нович Немиро́вич-Да́нченко, 23 December (4 January) 1845 – 18 September 1936, Prague, Czechoslovakia) was a Russian writer, essayist, journalist and memoirist. He was the brother of the theatre director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko, the most prolific Russian Empire writer of the late 19th-early 20th century, published more than 250 books; he was widely popular among the general reading public, but had little success with mainstream critics.

Early life

Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire (now Tbilisi, Georgia), the son of a Russian army officer based in the Caucasus. His memories of early childhood formed the basis of many of his later books, notably those dealing with the Caucasian Wars (The Forgotten Fortress novel, 1895, Gavryushka's Captivity, 1917). He began writing poetry while a student of the Moscow 1st Cadets Corps (1854–1863). In the 1860s he became a member of the Saint Petersburg literary circle based around Sophia Mei (poet Lev Mei's wife). It was in the Modny Magazin (Fashionable Magazine) which she edited that Nemirovich-Danchenko published his first poems in 1865.

In early 1870 Nemirovich-Danchenko was deported to Arkhangelsk (some biographers suggested it was due to embezzlement, but the exact reason remained unclear). From there he wrote a letter to Aleksey Nekrasov, complaining about the injustices he had suffered. The latter took interest in the young poet and published five of his verses in his Otechestvennye Zapiski (No. 11, 1871, signed D.) magazine, under the title Songs of the Fallen. The magazine's reputation was such that several "thick" journals took interest in Nemirovich-Danchenko and his documentary prose. His books of essays (Beyond the Polar Circle, 1876; From the Ocean: Essays, 1874; Solovki: Remembering a tour with Worshippers, 1874), full of original ethnographic material written in an engaging, lively manner, became highly popular and were later re-issued as compilations. "Who's the author of those articles on Solovetsky Monastery in Vestnik Evropy? They are excellent," enquired Ivan Turgenev to Mikhail Stasyulevich, the magazine's editor-in-chief.