Leonid Andreyev: A Study

📓 With the exception of Gorky, Russian prose writers of the early twentieth century have received scant attention in the West. Apart from the few associated with the symbolist camp, they tend to be treated in general histories of Russian literature under a single rubric as perpetuators of the traditions of nineteenth-century realism. Such a picture is misleading. Not only does it give an inadequate reflection of the intrinsic merits of some of the writers concerned; it also fails to convey their artistic and intellectual individuality and obscures the diverse processes which were taking place in prose fiction during this period. Perhaps no one has suffered more from this oversimplified approach than Leonid Nikolaevich Andreyev.