Veltman Aleksandr Fomich

Vel’tman Aleksandr Fomich 

Born July 18 (30), 1800, in St. Petersburg; died Jan. 11 (23), 1870, in Moscow. Russian writer; corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1854). Son of a nobleman.

While working as a military topographer, Vel’tman became fascinated by archaeology. In 1852 he became director of the Armory. He is the author of the travel novel The Wanderer (parts 1-3, 1831-32) and the historical novel Kashchei the Immortal (1833). His social novel of manners Salome (1846), the first of the cycle of novels Adventures Drawn from the Sea of Life (books 1-4, 1846-63), is outstanding among his works. Vel’tman’s writing is characterized by a mixture of the fantastic and the real, of adventure and daily-life elements, and by the use of the grotesque and of stylized speech.

WORKS

Prikliucheniia, pocherpnutye iz moria zhiteiskogo: Salomeia. Moscow, 1957.

REFERENCES

Pereverzev, V. F. “Predtecha Dostoevskogo.” In his book U istokov russkogo realisticheskogo romana, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1965.
Istoriia russkoi literatury XIX v.: Bibliograficheskii ukazatel’. Moscow-Leningrad, 1962.