Turgenev’s first major publication, Memoirs of a Hunter is a series of tales based largely on the author’s own experiences while hunting on his mother’s estate of Spasskoye, where he became aware of the iniquities of the system of serfdom and the privations and indignities suffered by the Russian peasantry. Told from the perspective of a dispassionate, observing narrator, the stories in this volume are concerned with the relationship between landowner and labourer, presenting a vivid and moving portrait of life in the era before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 – a watershed whose advent some believe was hastened by Turgenev’s sympathetic depiction of the ordinary folk of rural Russia.

Originally published individually in the St Petersburg journal Sovremennik before appearing as a single volume in 1852, and presented here in a masterful new translation by Michael Pursglove, this landmark collection of stories established the literary reputation of the author, who considered it his most significant contribution to Russian literature, and is universally regarded as a milestone in the Russian realist tradition. If you enjoyed Memoirs of a Hunter, you might like to read Fathers and Children, Virgin Soil, A Nest of the Gentry, Faust, On the Eve, Rudin, Smoke and The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Novellas.

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