Ivan Goncharov

Born in 1812 into a wealthy merchant family in Simbirsk that had been elevated to nobility, Goncharov studied at Moscow State University before settling into government work in Saint Petersburg — translator by day, tutor and writer by night. His first novel, The Same Old Story, appeared in Sovremennik in 1847. Oblomov followed in 1859, published in Otechestvennye zapiski, and became the book that outlasted him. His third novel, The Precipice, came a decade later in Vestnik Evropy. He also worked as censor, critic, and — late in life — paranoid accuser: in a bitter memoir called An Uncommon Sto…