The article analyzes the work of the understudied writer of the 19th century, Korneliy Vladislavovich Thorzhevsky, in particular, the poetics of the author’s unique colorful sketches from military life, short stories, novellas, essays is considered on the example of the story The Non-Hunters on a Hunt. The aim of the research is to find an answer to the question about the place of the writer K. V. Tkhorzhevsky in the literary process, about the peculiarities of his author’s style, the originality of the poetics of his artistic heritage. Special attention is paid to landscape characteristics, portraits, author’s irony, intonational multidimensionality and linguistic plasticity of the writer. In the course of research, it was revealed that the works of K. V. Thorzhevsky, still little known to the general reader and not being the subject of special research by philologists, have a number of obvious artistic merits, largely reflecting the special features of ‘fishing’ and ‘hunting’ prose; the first writers to introduce this prose were S. T. Aksakov, L. P. Sabaneev, etc. The novel The Non-Hunters on a Hunt, based on impressions from the military life, fully reveals the creative potential of the writer: the author appears as an observant person who knows and loves local nature, who is sensitive to psychological nuances when describing human characters. The author’s voice, sounding in an ironic tone, is not without soft lyrical notes, which is fundamentally important for the reception of the literary heritage of the vivid master of ‘hiking prose’. The analysis of the creative method of the writer, correlating with the facts of his biography, allows us to conclude that it is expedient to republish the best works of K. V. Thorzhevsky.