Gogol's Dead Souls in its first English dress, published in 1854 as a picture of Russian country life for readers who had never seen one. Chichikov buys the names of serfs who have died since the last census, and each landowner he visits is a portrait of a way of being ruined. The translator's title suits the disguise: this was sold to England as travel and is one of the great comic novels. A hundred plates of Russian painting, from Vishnyakov to Vereshchagin, mirror the novel's own gallery of landowners and officials.
