A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF ST. PETERSBURG CLASSICISTS IN THE 19TH - EARLY 20THCENTURY: IN THREE VOLUMES / ED. A.K. GAVRILOV. ST. PETERSBURG: BIBLIOTHECA CLASSICA PETROPOLITANA EDITION, 2021. (VOL. I: A-K (XXXVI, 1-426). VOL. II: L-YA (VI, 427-860). VOL. III: INDEXES AND APPENDICES (VIII, 861-1050)

Abstract

The review presents the long-awaited book, based on years of thinking by authors about the fate of the national humanities. The dictionary has already become a fact of literary and cultural life, and its protagonists are not only the people described in it, but also the authors of essays and the editorial board, constantly discovering threads of continuity with St. Petersburg classicists. 43 authors of various philological specializations participated in the building of this, without any exaggeration, epochmaking work, which includes articles devoted to 250 St. Petersburg classicists in the 19th - early 20thcentury (scholars, tutors, translators, managers). To recreate the true image of the personage, the authors attracted a wide range of sources, namely, research papers, memoirs, correspondence and still unpublished archival materials. Collected together (although with varying degrees of detail depending on the number of extant sources), these portraits give us a comprehensive picture of the development of St. Petersburg classicism in its heyday and at the same time allow us to assess the state of intellectual forces and spiritual life of Russian society as a whole. The dictionary is convenient to use, because it is equipped with various indexes that make up a separate volume, which ends with a review essay written by the responsible editor and inspirer of the publication A.K. Gavrilov, where, among other things, the principle of material selection is analyzed in detail. The book is convenient and indispensable for work and at the same time is a fascinating reading.