Varvara Semenovna Miklashevich

Miklashevich, Varvara Semenovna 

(maiden name, V. S. Smagina). Born in 1772, in Penza; died in 1846, in St. Petersburg. Russian writer.

Miklashevich was the daughter of a nobleman. She was a relative and friend of A. A. Zhandr, who introduced her to A. S. Griboedov and A. I. Odoevskii. Miklashevich made her literary debut in 1824 as a translator. She wrote the novel The Village of Mikhailovskoe, or An Eighteenth Century Landowner (1828–36; published in full in 1864–65), in which she denounced serfdom and described actual events and people, including prominent Decembrists. The novel was banned by the censorship and distributed in manuscript form; in his writings, A. S. Pushkin attested to the novel’s popularity (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 12, 1949, p. 183).

REFERENCES

Griboedov, A. S. Poln. Sobr. Soch., vol. 3. Petrograd, 1917.
Danilov, I. “Zabytaia pisatel’nitsa.” Istoricheskii vestnik, 1900, no. 7.
Bobrov, E. “A. S. Pushkin and V. S. Miklashevich.” Sbornik uchenoliteraturnogo obshchestva pri Iur’evskom universitete, 1908, vol. 13.

L. G. FRIZMAN