ELEGIAC PESSIMISM
‘Ivan Turgenevs whole aspect and temperament was of a larger and manlier kind than I have ever yet encounter¬ed in a scribbler’, Henry James reported to his aunt. These qualities shine forth in A.V. Knowles’s new edition of Turgenev’s letters. Turgenev was attacked by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky for his liberal humanist views, condemned for decades to a frustrating liaison with a married woman, and exiled to his estate by the capricious edicts of the Tsar.