The "little tragedies" stand among the great masterpieces of Russian literature, yet they were last translated into English a quarter-century ago, and have in recent years been out of print entirely. In this outstanding new translation, Nancy K. Anderson preserves the cadence and intensity of Pushkin's work while aligning it with today's poetic practices and freer approach to metrics. In addition she provides critical essays examining each play in depth, a discussion of her approach to translating the plays, and a consideration of the genre of these dramatic pieces and their performability.The four "little tragedies" -- Mozart and Salieri, The Miserly Knight, The Stone Guest, and A Feast During the Plague -- are extremely compressed dialogues, each dealing with a dominant protagonist whose central internal conflict determines both the plot and structure of the play. Pushkin focuses on human passions and the interplay between free will and fate: though each protagonist could avoid self-ruin, instead he freely chooses it.

    Hazlitt was an English writer remembered for his humanitarian essays. He was one of the great masters of the miscellaneous essay, displaying a keen intellect, sensibility, and wide scope of interest and knowledge. His best-known work is The Spirit of the Age, a collection of portraits of his contemporaries, including Lamb, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Jeremy Bentham, and Sir Walter Scott. The essays in this volume are divided into the following headings: On Life in General; On Writers and Writing; On Painters and Painting; On Actors and Acting; and Characters. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

    We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.