Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls, Collected Tales and Plays (22 books)

NIKOLAI VASILIEVICH GOGOL (1809-1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist, novelist and short story writer.  Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism and the grotesque.

Early works, such as EVENINGS ON A FARM NEAR DIKANKA (1831-32), were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore.  The four tales constituting MIRGOROD (1835) were a continuation of the "Evenings", but revealed a strong gap between Gogol's romantic escapism and an otherwise pessimistic attitude toward life.  The splendid narrative of the Cossack past in "Taras Bulba" certainly provided an escape from the present, but "The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" was, for all its humour, full of bitterness about the meanness and vulgarity of existence.

Gogol's later writing turned a satirical eye on the corrupt provincial bureaucracy under Nicholas I.  Among the most celebrated is the play THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR (1836).  Based upon an anecdote allegedly recounted to Gogol by Pushkin, it is a comedy of errors, mercilessly satirizing human greed, stupidity, and the extensive political corruption of Imperial Russia.

His masterpiece, the comic novel DEAD SOULS (1842), instantly established his reputation as the greatest prose writer in the Russian language.  It has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp.  As the wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls" -- deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them -- we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition.  Seven translations are presented in this collection.

Gogol's COLLECTED TALES combine the wide-eyed, credulous imagination of the peasant with the sardonic social criticism of the city dweller.  His memorable creations include the minor official who misplaces his nose ("The Nose"); the wily madman who becomes convinced that a dog can tell him everything he needs to know ("Diary of a Madman"); and the downtrodden clerk whose life is changed by the acquisition of a splendid new overcoat ("The Overcoat") -- a story worked out with so many significant trifles that Dostoevsky was later to exclaim that all Russian realists had come "from under Gogol’s greatcoat."


This is a revised and updated version of an earlier torrent.  The following books are in ePUB and PDF format as indicated:

* Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (Pantheon, 1998).  Translated and Annotated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. -- ePUB

* Complete Works (Delphi Classics, 2012).  Various translators. -- ePUB

* Dead Souls (Barnes & Noble, 2005).  Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Introduction and Notes by Jeffrey Meyers. -- ePUB

* Dead Souls (Yale UP, 1996).  Translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney; revised, edited, and with an Introduction by Susanne Fusso. -- PDF + ePUB

* Dead Souls (Floating Press, 2009).  Translated by D. J. Hogarth. -- ePUB

* Dead Souls (Penguin Classics, 2004).  Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Robert A. Maguire. -- ePUB

* Dead Souls (Pantheon, 1996).  Translated and Annotated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. -- ePUB

* Dead Souls (NYR Books, 2011).  Translated with an Introduction by Douglas Rayfield. -- ePUB

* Dead Souls: The Reavey Translation / Backgrounds & Sources / Essays in Criticism (Norton Critical Edition, 1985).  Translated by George Reavey; edited by George Gibian. -- PDF

* Diary of a Madman & Other Stories (Dover, 2006). -- ePUB

* Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector, and Selected Stories (Penguin Classics, 2005).  Translated with Notes by Ronald Wilks. -- ePUB

* Evenings Near the Village of Dikanko (Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1957).  Edited by Ovid Gorchakov. -- PDF

* How the Two Ivans Quarrelled (Melville House, 2009).  Translated by John Cournos. -- ePUB

* Inspector-General, The (Floating Press, 2011).  Translated by Thomas Seltzer. -- ePUB

* Mirgorod (Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958).  Translated by O. A. Gorchakov. -- PDF

* Mirgorod: Four Tales (Minerva, 1968).  Translated by David Magarshack. -- PDF

* Night Before Christmas, The (Penguin, 2014).  Translated by Anna Summers. -- ePUB

* Overcoat & Other Short Stories, The (Dover, 1992).  Translated by Mary Struve and Isabel F. Hapgood. -- PDF

* Overcoat & The Nose, The (Penguin, 1995).  Translated by Ronald Wilks. -- PDF

* Tales of Good and Evil (John Lehman, 1949).  Translated by David Magarshack. -- PDF

* Taras Bulba (Modern Library, 2003).  Translated by Peter Constantine. -- ePUB

* Theater of Nikolay Gogol, The: Plays and Selected Writings (Chicago UP, 1980).  Edited by Milton Ehre; translated by Milton Ehre and Fruma Gottschalk. -- PDF

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