Leikin, Nikolai Aleksandrovich

Leikin, Nikolai Aleksandrovich 

Born Dec. 7 (19), 1841, in St. Petersburg; died there, Jan. 6 (19), 1906. Russian writer and journalist. Son of a merchant.

Leikin published his first works in 1860. The main theme of his numerous short stories, sketches, skits, plays, novellas, and novels (including Stukin and Khrustal’nikov, 1886, and The Satyr and the Nymph, 1888) is the way of life of the St. Petersburg merchants and civil servants. However, Leikin’s comic exposé of middle-class mores was superficial. From 1882 to 1905 he was editor and publisher of the humorous journal Oskolki (Splinters), which attracted many of the former contributors of Iskra, as well as A. P. Chekhov, who published over 200 short stories there between 1882 and 1887.

REFERENCES

Saltykov-Shchedrin, M. E. “Povesti, rasskazy, i dramaticheskie sochineniia N. A. Leikina.” Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 8. Moscow, 1937.
Istoriia russkoi literatury XIX v.: Bibliograficheskii ukazatel’. Moscow-Leningrad, 1962.