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 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.
