Victorian Literature and Russian Culture

This essay examines the movement of Victorian novels into Russia, as well as the published sources through which those novels became available to Russian readers—including novelists themselves. Reading English eighteenth-century fiction at a moment when their own national literature, prose in particular, was still in its formative stage, Russian novelists took to heart the instruction these works provided on narration, setting, and character. Russians also read many now long-forgotten novelists whose works reached them in translation. Translators in both countries adapted liberally and unapologetically, often smoothing out cultural markers and stylistic idiosyncrasies that made an author’s voice to readers. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, the translations were a great success even as distinctions between the English and Russian novel as literary forms became more apparent

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