Editing Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy

In Editing Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, Susanne Fusso examines Mikhail Katkov's literary career without vilification or canonization, focusing on the ways in which his nationalism fueled his drive to create a canon of Russian literature and support its recognition around the world. In each chapter, Fusso considers Katkov's relationship with a major Russian literary figure. In addition to Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, she explores Katkov's interactions with Vissarion Belinsky, Evgeniia Tur, and the legacy of Aleksandr Pushkin. This groundbreaking study will fascinate scholars, students, and general readers interested in Russian literature and literary history.

Susanne Fusso is Marcus L. Taft Professor of Modern Languages and Professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Wesleyan University. Her most recent translation of Sergey Gandlevsky's work is Illegible.

As the first book-length study of Katkov in English, this volume fills a significant gap in the scholarly literature. This book rescues Katkov from earlier caricature and shows his vital place in the larger ecosystem of literary production in the age of the great Russian novel.

Fusso shows convincingly that Katkov is much more than a footnote in the history of Russian literature.

Fusso shows in this fascinating study how Katkov as editor dedicated his life both to the propagation of his beliefs and to the promotion of Russian literature. Among other things, her book is an account of the reception of Katkov from his own day to the present time as reflective of deep cultural currents in Russia.

In making her case for Katkov's editorial clout, Fusso performs a tremendous scholarly service. She elegantly translates key passages from essays by Katkov that have remained largely unexamined by Western critics, tracking his ideological evolution from moderate progressive to reactionary.

The appearance of the first English-language monograph about M. N. Katkov, the editor and man of letters, is an event.

Fusso's beautifully written study offers a behind-the-scenes account of a man who not only 'inspired vehement passions, both positive and negative,' but also published many of Russia's greatest nineteenth-century novels.

Kate Holland, author of The Novel in the Age of Disintegration:

Fusso analyzes at great length and in tremendous detail Katkov's ideological program as it developed and as it was expressed in the pages of the Russian Herald, and demonstrates multiple ways in which the novels of Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky engage with and respond to this ideological program. The book's perspective is entirely new and makes a welcome and significant scholarly intervention in the study of nineteenth-century Russian literature. It is a work of impressive scholarship.

Irwin Weil, author of From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds:

Fusso's book concentrates on a man who played a very central role in the evaluation and publishing of some of the world's greatest and most influential novels. Katkov's wide reputation tended to picture him as a dyed-in-the-wool political reactionary. Fusso writes to correct this conventional notion and proves convincingly that the reality was far more complex. In the process she provides deeply interesting analysis and sheds light on an incredibly creative period of Russian history. This is a truly significant contribution to the fields of literature and history. The work is strikingly original and beautifully balanced.