Alexander Pushkin

Born in Moscow in 1799 to minor nobility - his maternal great-grandfather was Abram Petrovich Gannibal, an African-born general kidnapped by Ottomans, freed by Peter the Great, and raised as his godson. Pushkin published his first poem at fifteen and graduated from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum already known to the literary establishment. His "Ode to Liberty" earned him exile under Emperor Alexander I; under surveillance and unable to publish, he wrote the play Boris Godunov. Between 1825 and 1832 he serialized Eugene Onegin, the novel in verse that became his grand opus. He died in 1837 from wounds sustained in a duel with Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès, a French officer in the Chevalier Guard and the alleged lover of his wife - also her sister's husband.