In Russia, female authors came to the fore in the 1830s and 1850s, a fact which raises questions about one of the central ways that discussions of Russian literature are usually organized: the periodization of the forties and sixties. The men of the forties and those of the sixties are well-known figures in the world of nineteenth-century Russian politics and prose. This division signals a movement from diagnosis to action, from the superfluous man to the New Man, from apathy to activity.

In the nineteenth century, women's writings were an essential part of the development of Russian realism; including discussion of these writings in our analyses of realism today would reshape the century in terms of theme, periodization, and style as this essay seeks to show. In addition, the writings I will discuss propose a different model of literary evolution from Harold Bloom's theory of literary paternity as a battle between fathers and sons. While there are certain differences among the writings of the women of the thirties and fifties, there are also many, many points of connection.

In presenting the history of women's writing in Russia from its beginnings to the present day, we have been guided by the desire to incorporate the “livingness” of which Jeanette Winterson speaks. To capture that essential living quality of the women writers presented in this volume, the eras in which they lived, the literary lives they led, and the places they occupied within a tradition long dominated by men is the task we have set before ourselves in this volume. Women's literary endeavors have, with few exceptions, occupied obscure, indeed often unseen places in the history of Russian literature. As we set about the process of reintegrating women writers into the history of Russian literature, we wanted to recover lost literary lives, address factual gaps in our knowledge, and rethink the contexts within which women's writing has been produced.