First Love
'First Love' Summary
First Love was published in March 1860 in the Reader's Library. The author claimed it was the most autobiographical of all his works. Here Turgenev is retelling an incident from his own life, his infatuation with a young neighbor in the country, Princess Catherine Shakhovskoy (the Zinaida of the novella), an infatuation that lasted until his discovery that Catherine was in fact his own father's mistress.
Critics were divided. Some criticized its light subject matter that did not touch upon any of the pressing social and political issues of the day. Others condemned the impropriety of that subject matter, namely a father and son in love with the same woman and a young woman who was the mistress of a married man. But it had its many admirers, including the French novelist Gustave Flaubert, who gushed in a letter to Turgenev, "What an exciting girl that Zinochka [Zinaida] is!" The Countess Lambert, a close acquaintance of Turgenev, told the author that the Russian emperor himself had read the novella to the empress and been delighted by it.
Book Details
Author
Ivan Turgenev
Russia
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. His first major publication, a short story collec...
More on Ivan TurgenevDownload eBooks
Listen/Download Audiobook
- Select Speed
Related books
Letters of Two Brides by Honoré de Balzac
Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées (Letters of Two Brides) is an epistolary novel by the French writer Honoré de Balzac. It was serialized in the French...
The Mintage by Elbert Hubbard
The first describes how 5 frightened orphan children from a foreign country were cared for on a railroad journey of a thousand miles; all by strangers...
Family Happiness by Leo Tolstoy
The 17 year old Marya falls in love with the much older Sergyei Mikhailitch, an old family friend, and the two are married. They share an initially bl...
Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair by William Morris
In a world of magic and adventure, a young boy named Christopher sets out on a quest to find his true home and the love of his life. Child Christophe...
The Permanent Husband by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The novella's plot revolves around the complicated relationship between the nobleman Velchaninov and the widower Trusotsky, whose deceased wife was Ve...
Uther and Igraine by Warwick Deeping
The story revolves around the lives of King Uther and Queen Igraine, who are the parents of the legendary King Arthur. The book is set in ancient Brit...
The Last Of The Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical novel written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826. It is the second book of the Leathersto...
Ancia Eterna by Júlia Lopes de Almeida
"Ancia Eterna" é uma obra marcante da autora brasileira Júlia Lopes de Almeida. Esta história envolvente leva os leitores a uma jornada através das co...
The Short Line War by Samuel Merwin
"The Short Line War is a story that will appeal more particularly to the sterner sex, and we take it that the hyphenated name, Merwin-Webster, stands...
Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope
Orley Farm is a novel written in the realist mode by Anthony Trollope (1815–82), and illustrated by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais (18...
Reviews for First Love
No reviews posted or approved, yet...