Dead Souls
By Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol (translated by D. J. Hogarth)
Cover: A Troika Sleigh in Russia (19th century), oil on canvas by Nikolai Sverchkov (1817-1898) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (artist died 1898)
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Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and the people whom he encounters. These people typify the Russian middle aristocracy of the time. Gogol himself saw his work as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book characterised it as a "poem in prose". Gogol intended the novel to be the first part of a three-volume work, but burned the manuscript of the second part shortly before his death.
Summary source: Wikipedia: Dead Souls · CC BY-SA 4.0