The reception of "Sketchers of a hunter" in USA, or I.S. Turgenev against slavery

Abstract

The following article contains a research of the reasons for Turgenev's "Sketches of a hunter" popularity in XIXth century USA. It is considered the general reasons for the interest of Russia and the United States in each other, and the immediate reasons for Turgenev's popularity in America in the 1850s. The author analyses early American reviews on this book and finds out that the cause for such popularity was the common social problem of slavery in the USA and serfdom in Russia. The first few reviews of Americans on Turgenev's book indicate that the author of "Sketches of a hunter" was initially perceived in the New World as a writer who raises only social problems. Some of Turgenev's texts were compared with the works of American writers, for example, with Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe's “Uncle Tom's Cabin”. The aesthetic meaning of "Sketches of a hunter" became clear to American critics only in the late 19th century due to some Turgenev-influenced American writers, such as George Cable, Hamlin Garland, Sherwood Anderson. At this time, the first complete English translation of "Sketches of a hunter" was made by Constance Garnet.