IVAN SERGEYEVICH TURGENIEFF (written also “Turgeneff”) was one of the great novelists whose work made Russian fiction a part of the literature of the world. He was born at Orel, Russia, November 9th, 1818, and educated at the leading colleges of Russia, with a post-graduate course at Berlin. After his return to Russia, he entered the government service in the Department of the Interior and remained thus employed until 1852, when the views he expressed in an obituary of Gogol led to his arrest and imprisonment. After being banished to Orel for several years, he was liberated and allowed to go abroad. From 1854 until his death, September 3d, 1883, most of his time was spent in Baden-Baden, Paris, and other cities of Western Europe, but he visited Russia from time to time, and grew in favor with his countrymen who had at first misunderstood him. In his first notable work, “The Annals of a Sportsman” (1845–57), he gave his influence for the emancipation of the serfs, and showed such talent as a writer, that papers of the series were translated into French, English, and other languages. Among his most noted novels are “Rudin” (1855), “A Nest of Nobles” (1858), “Helene” (1860), “Fathers and Sons” (1862), “Smoke” (1867), and “Virgin Soil” (1876). His “Senilia,” which were published in England in 1883, include an extraordinary collection of “Prose Poems” characteristically Russian, and sometimes so original as to call for severe thought before they become intelligible. Perhaps it was because of these very sketches that Tolstoi was first inspired with his strong prejudice against literary “originality” of all kinds.