The M. S. Anderson Collection:
Perceptions of Russia, 1525-1917
TRAVEL
Travel writing about Russia began with an account of Moscow by the Austrian diplomat Sigmund von Herberstein, who first visited Russia in 1517 and published his description of the country in 1549. It continued in the Elizabethan Age primarily with the accounts of Englishmen, notably Giles Fletcher (1591), whose information pervaded many later descriptions. Early modern travellers to and writers about Russia were primarily diplomats. They were hindered by the unfriendliness of the Russian people, difficulties of movement, and, in most cases, ignorance of the Russian language. Knowledge about Russia was geographically patchy and was distorted by myths and prejudices. Interest and knowledge grew gradually. In the seventeenth century, Sir Dudley Digges recorded the flora and fauna of south Russia (1618), and Pierre Chevalier provided the first systematic account of Cossacks and the Ukraine (1672). Much writing in this period was derivative
Peter the Great’s foreign travel and contacts sparked interest in Russia in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and Catherine the Great encouraged German scientific writers in its last four decades. Some of the physicians, military men and professionals whom Peter encouraged to Russia left accounts – notably a physician, Samuel Collins, who described the Russians as ‘a People who differ from all other Nations of the world, in most of their Actions’. Philipp Johann von Strahlenberg provided the first systematic account of Siberia in 1730, while Johann Gottlieb Georgi supplied the first systematic account of the non-Russian peoples of the Volga Basin, the Urals and the Caucasus in 1776. The later eighteenth century saw an increase of travel accounts, some by women, some the result of a ‘northern tour’ which encompassed Russia and Scandinavia and emerged as an alternative or complement to the traditional Grand Tour. The focus of description remained Moscow, St Petersburg and the Baltic provinces, and the standpoint was one of superiority. Only in the early nineteenth century were detailed and substantial accounts published about the Crimea. The nineteenth century saw missionaries, such as Robert Pinkerton, join the ranks of travel writers.
Perceptions of Russia were European rather than national, with considerable translation of texts and with plagiarism both of texts and illustrations. From the sixteenth century until well into the nineteenth century western Europeans saw Russia as a vast, cold Asian land, peopled by backward, uncultured peasants with an inordinate love of drinking, ruled by a (sometimes enlightened) despot
Travel accounts in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish and Dutch form a substantial component of the M. S. Anderson Collection. Many – not all – are illustrated. They include well-known and obscure works from the sixteenth century to the Collection’s cut-off point of 1917. The items selected for display are landmarks of travel literature from the handpress era of printing.
Comentari della Moscovia et Parimente della Russia
Sigmund von Herberstein
Venice: Gioan Battista Pedrezzano, 1550
[M.S. Anderson] 1550 – Herberstein
Sigmund von Herberstein (1486-1566) was an Austrian diplomat who made two extended ambassadorial visits to Russia, in 1517 and 1546. His resulting book on Russian geography, history and people, Rerum Moscoviticarum commentarii, is one of the earliest accounts of the country. First published in 1549, it ran through numerous editions and translations. It is the major early source of western European knowledge of Russia, and was widely influential in shaping subsequent views of the country. Herberstein stood out from many later travellers for his comparative lack of prejudice, for the thoroughness of his interest, for an understanding of the Russian language, and for his scholarship, which led him to make use of little-known manuscript sources. Shown here is the first Italian translation.
Of the Russe Common wealth
Giles Fletcher
London: T. Charde, 1591
[M.S. Anderson] 1591 – Fletcher
This small 120-page octavo is another of the most significant early works on Russia. Its author, Giles Fletcher (1549-1611), was sent to Russia in June 1588 as a special ambassador and stayed until July or August 1589. Like Herberstein (on whom to an extent he draws) but unlike most travellers, Fletcher knew Russian. His book is a thorough and systematic analysis of the resources and potential of Russia. It was initially suppressed at the request of the Russia Company, which was concerned at Fletcher’s criticisms of the Russian tsar and state for tyranny. But its content recurred frequently in later accounts, and it was not surpassed in many essentials until the eighteenth century.
A Relation of Three Embassies from His Sacred Majestie Charles II to the Great Duke of Muscovie, the King of Sweden, and the King of Denmark
Guy Miege
London: J. Starkey, 1669
[M.S. Anderson] 1669 – Miege
Guy Miege (1644-1718) was a Swiss-born author and lexicographer who went to London in 1661 and was an under-secretary to Charles Howard, Earl of Carlisle, on Carlisle’s embassy to Russian, Sweden and Denmark in 1663-4. He wrote his Relation with Carlisle’s permission. Miege’s impressions of the Russians as coarse ignoramuses with an unattractive religion and despotic monarchy remained the prevailing view until well into the nineteenth century.
Voyage de Milady Craven a Constantinople, par la Crimée, en 1786
Elizabeth Craven
Paris: Durand, 1789
[M.S. Anderson] 1789 – Craven
Women appear increasingly as tourists and travel writers towards the end of the eighteenth century. Lady Elizabeth Craven (1750-1828) was the first female tourist to Russia to venture beyond the two capitals to the southern provinces. Russia was one of several European countries in which she travelled extensively between 1783 and 1786, and from which she wrote lively, gossipy letters to her future husband, the Margrave of Anspach, describing manners, customs and places, with her activities and opinions. A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople (1789), published at the suggestion of Horace Walpole in 1787, was Lady Craven’s most important work. It ran through four English editions by 1800 – three of which are in the M. S. Anderson Collection – with a French translation (shown here) appearing in the first year of publication, and an extended edition appeared in 1814.
The Voyages and Travells of the Ambassadors sent by Frederick Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia
Adam Olearius
2nd edn
London: J. Starkey and T. Basset, 1669
[M.S. Anderson] 1669 – Olearius (fol.)
The German scholar Adam Oleareus (1603-1671) first visited Russia in 1633 as secretary to the ambassador sent by Frederick III, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, to Muscovy and Persia, and returned to the country in 1636, 1639 and 1643. His Voyages and Travells was first published in German in 1647. Scholarly like the works of Herberstein and Fletcher but longer and more comprehensive than all its predecessors, it was to the seventeenth century what Herberstein’s work had been to the sixteenth. Within the next fifty years, it had run through nine German, five French, three Dutch, two English and an Italian edition, with more eighteenth-century editions to follow. The English translation, of which the second edition is shown here, considerably influenced British ideas of Russia in the period before Peter the Great. This copy is inscribed by one John Miller, dated 15 April 1701, and contains his notes, some of which supplement the index.
Das nord- und ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia
Philipp Johann von Strahlenberg
Stockholm: P. J. von Strahlenberg, 1730
[M.S. Anderson] 1730 – Strahlenberg
Philipp Johann von Strahlenberg (1676-1747) was a Swedish officer captured at the Battle of Poltavia in 1709. He studied the geography of Siberia and the anthropology, languages and customs of its native tribes as a prisoner of war in Tobulsk from 1711 to 1721 and recorded the results in this book. He furthermore drew new maps of all of Russia and suggested definite borders between the continents of Europe and of Asia in Russian territory. As the first systematic account of Russia’s vast possessions beyond the Urals, Das nord- und ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia was of major importance. It was subsequently translated into English, French and Spanish. The M. S. Anderson Collection contains, in addition to this first edition, a quarto English translation from 1738 and a duodecimo French one from 1757.
Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, vol. 2
William Coxe
London: T. Cadell, 1784
[M.S. Anderson] 1784 – Coxe
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a new ‘Northern tour’, incorporating Russia, Scandinavia, Poland and Germany, emerged alongside the standard Grand Tour. The historian and clergyman William Coxe (1748-1828) is perhaps the most noted chronicler of such a tour, on which he accompanied the future eleventh Earl of Pembroke between 1775 and 1779. His Travels, which ran through six English editions between 1784 and 1803 and also appeared in French and German translation, combine diary descriptions with historical background taken from various English and foreign writers. The work has been described as ‘a vast canvas of historical and guide-book material’ (Cross). This is one of three editions in the M. S. Anderson Collection.
Travelling Sketches in Russia and Sweden, during the Years 1805, 1806, 1807, 1808
Sir Robert Ker Porter
London: R. Phillips, 1809
[M.S. Anderson] 1809 - Porter (fol.)
Sir Robert Ker Porter (1777-1842) was a writer, diplomat, and – primarily – a painter. He first visited Russia in 1805 at the invitation of Tsar Alexander I to paint some vast historical murals for the admiralty in St Petersburg. His Travelling Sketches comprises letters based around the key feature, illustrations, Porter explaining: ‘He [the author] had engaged to accompany the Drawings in the Work with some explanations, and a general sketch of the manners and customs of the people who form their subjects.’ (p. [iii]). In addition to the sumptuous English edition, the M. S. Anderson Collection includes a one-volume American edition from the same year which omits the raison d’être, all the pictures.
Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des russischen Reichs, Bd. 1
Peter Simon Pallas
St. Petersburg: Kayserlichen Academie der Wissenschaften, 1771
[M.S. Anderson] 1771 – Pallas (fol.)
Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811) was one of several russified Germans imported by Catherine the Great who explored and described Russia thoroughly. He became a professor of natural history at the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg in 1768 and, in the same year, set out on a six-year expedition through Russia and Siberia as far as the Chinese frontier. His account of his travels is particularly outstanding for its thorough recording of flora and fauna. Pallas’s Reise was supplemented by an account of his travels in southern Russia and the Crimea, where he subsequently settled, in 1793-4. The M. S. Anderson Collection includes translations of his work into French and English, with selections in Danish.
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COSTUME
An interest in costume has been part of the interest in Russian customs and manners since the first descriptions of travels to Russia appeared in the sixteenth century, demonstrating both the perceived quaintness of Russia and diversity across its vast territory. Because of its visual impact, illustration of costume, sometimes copied between books, has been a selling point even of works whose texts show little interest in it, both books by travellers to Russia and derivative descriptions. In addition to informing about an exotic country, they document developments in techniques of book illustration.
The Nauigations, Peregrinations and Voyages, made into Turkie by Nicholas Nicholay Daulphinois, Lord of Arfeuile …
Nicolas de Nicolay
London: T. Dawson, 1585
[M.S. Anderson] 1585 – Nicolay
Nicolas de Nicolay (1517-1583) was a traveller, diplomat and geographer for the French royal court who travelled to Turkey at about the end of the year 1550. His account of his travels, originally published in French in 1567, was widely popular. Four further French editions appeared between 1568 and 1586, and this English translation of 1585 followed translations into German, Dutch and Italian. The sixty-odd woodcut illustrations in this edition are copied from the 1576 Antwerp edition. All are full-length portraits, included for what they show about the people and exotic flavour of the country, with subjects such as ‘a woman Moorisque of Alger in Barbarie, as she goeth in the streetes’, ‘The great ladie and wife vnto the great Turk’, ‘Cadilesquier a Judge in spiritual and temporal matters’ and ‘a slaue Moore’.
The Present State of Moscovy, or Russia
Thomas Salmon
London: J. Crokatt, 1727
[M.S. Anderson] 1727 – Salmon
The Present State of Moscovy, or Russia is part of a 31-volume series published between 1724 and 1738, Modern History, or, The Present State of All Nations. M. S. Anderson owned the Russian section both in the original English and in a German translation of 1752. While apparel is a minor concern in this combination of history and travel writing, two of the three folded plates are of costumes. Chapter Seven ‘Treats of the Stature, Complexion, Shape and Habits of the Russians’ before proceeding to their ‘Genius, Temper and Vices’. The text on dress occupies just under a page and deals with Laplanders, Samoyeds and Russian men and women, encompassing Peter the Great’s modernisation of dress.
Description de toutes les nations de l'empire de Russie
Johann Gottlieb Georgi
St. Petersbourg: C.G. Müller, 1776-1777
[M.S. Anderson] 1776 - Georgi (fol.)
Johann Gottlieb Georgi (1729-1802) was a German geographer and a professor of chemistry at St Petersburg, who accompanied the Swedish botanist Johann Peter Falck and the German naturalist and explorer Peter Simon Pallas on their respective journeys through Siberia. This French translation of his Beschreibung aller Nationen des russischen Reichs (1776), stands out for the hand-colouring of its 75 plates of costumes, all labelled in Russian, German and French, and often showing both the front and back view of costumes. The sub-title mentions dress as a minor feature: ‘oú l'on expose leurs moeurs, religions, usages, habitations, habillemens et autres particulatités remarquables’, and factual descriptions of dress constitute a minor part of the text.
Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Russians
William Alexander
London: J. Goodwin, [181-]
[M.S. Anderson] 1819+ - Alexander
This is a standard costume book. Emphasis is on illustration, with a page or so of text, focussing on dress, to illustrate each of the 64 engraved coloured plates. These are copied from engravings executed at St Peterburg 1776-9, with descriptions from various sources. The preface justifies the existence of such a work: ‘The utility of such publications as the present has been sufficiently proved by the extensive sale of the larger editions […]. This present work possesses all the advantages which the former ones embraced, and has the further merit of a rather more systematic arrangement, and of being much less expensive.’ (p. [v]). It continues: ‘The Russian empire is of an extent unknown to other modern nations, and hardly equalled by that of the Romans in the summit of their power.’
Russia: Being a Description of the Character, Manners, Customs, Dress, Diversions and Other Peculiarities of the Different Nations Inhabiting the Russian Empire, vol. 1
Frederick Shoberl
London: R. Ackermann, [1822]
[M.S. Anderson] 1823 - Shoberl
This is part of a 42-volume duodecimo series entitled ‘The World in Miniature’, published between 1821 and 1827 and covering countries situated from the British Isles and western Europe to the South Sea Islands and the Far East (Russia occupies four volumes). The Russian interest is in the variety of nations within a single vast empire. Each volume contains eighteen hand-coloured plates, primarily of people in costume. The descriptions can be sharp, as for the wives of Moscow tradesmen: ‘On an elegant woman this habit might be becoming, but every point about these dames is the opposite of beauty, and it only serves with them to render deformity more hideous’. (vol. 1, p. 53).
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PETER THE GREAT
Peter I of Russia, self-styled ‘the Great’, was tsar of Russia from 1682 until his death in 1725. He aimed to modernise Russia. To that end he centralised the government, enlarged, modernised and professionalised the army, introduced a standing army and created a navy. He subordinated the church to the state, kick-started economic reform, and founded St Petersburg, modelled on Amsterdam. Educationally, he founded schools and insisted upon all Russian children of a certain rank learning elementary mathematics and geometry. He encouraged Russian noblemen to visit western Europe, leading by example, and wanted the young and educated to westernise, even to the extent of shaving their beards. Westerners could not but be aware of him. In England, which he visited in 1698, he met William III and was painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller. He established permanent Russian consuls in all the significant capital cities of Europe. In the words on the back cover of M.S. Anderson’s Peter the Great (second edition, 1978):
Peter the Great is one of the dominating personalities of early modern Europe. During his reign (1682/89-1725) Russia emerged from semi-Asiatic isolation on the remote fringes of the western world to become a great political and military power in her own right, and, for the first time, a principal actor on the European stage.
M.S. Anderson owned approximately fifty titles either about specifically Peter the Great or with substantial content pertaining to him, beginning with Foy de la Neuville’s eye-witness Account of Muscovy, as it was in the Year 1689 in both French (1698) and English (1699), and ending with a work of fiction for boys about Peter I’s youth, Frederick Whishaw’s The Lion Cub (1916). The bulk of the items are from the eighteenth century. Over one half of the titles are in English, with nearly one-third in French, and others in German, Dutch, Italian, Latin and Russian. Typically for the M. S. Anderson Collection as a whole, the books include several works in translation, with or without the original, and works in two or more editions. They provide an excellent source not only for the history of Russia under Peter the Great but also of historiography.
An Account of Muscovy, as it was in the Year 1689
Foy de la Neuville
London: Edward Castle, 1699
[M.S. Anderson] 1699 - Foy de la Neuville
This account of the visit of a Polish envoy to Russia in 1689 was published in French in 1698 before appearing in Dutch and in English in 1699. Beside a more general description of Russia (sometimes erroneous and sometimes possibly derived), the book contains a contemporary description of Peter the Great and his accession to individual power. The writer is critical of Peter’s suppression of Catholicism. His personal description of Peter is unflattering: ‘The Czar Peter is very tall, and pretty well shap’d, and has a Comely Face; his Eyes are large, but unsteady, which makes it no pleasant thing for any body to look upon him; his Head shakes continually, though he is but Twenty Years old. His diversion is to make his Favourites shoot at one another, and sometimes they kill one another to ingratiate themselves with him. In Winter he causes great holes to be made in the Ice, and forces his fattest Lords to pass over ‘em in Sleds; they fall in and are drown’d sometimes, when the holes are not froze over again hard enough to bear ‘em. Now and then he causes the Great Bell to be toll’d, and nothing pleases him better than to see houses on fire; which happens very often in Moscow …’ (p. 97).
The History of the Life of Peter the First, Emperor of Russia
John Mottley
London: The booksellers in town and country, 1739
[M.S. Anderson] 1739 - Mottley (fol.)
John Mottley’s biography of Peter the Great appeared in two editions in 1739 – a three-volume octavo edition and this folio – with a further two editions in 1740. Its author was better known as a comic dramatist and editor, although he was later to write The History of the Life and Reign of the Empress Catharine (1744). While aware of earlier publications about Peter the Great, which he cites, Mottley considered that there was a gap in the market for a biography of Peter: ‘whose Life I have undertaken to give the Publick, seeing it has been so long, but vainly expected from the Pens of others, who might have been more equal to the Task’ (p. 6). It was the most detailed biography of Peter to appear hitherto in English. Although in quality it was mediocre, it was from Mottley’s works at least as much as from any others that Englishmen of the mid-eighteenth century derived their knowledge of Peter’s reign. This copy belonged to Hans Sloane, nephew of the celebrated physician and book collector.
Leben Petri des Ersten und Grossen, Czaars von Russland
Justus Gottfried Rabener
Leipzig: J. F. Gleditschens Sohn, 1725
[M.S. Anderson] 1725 – Rabener
This relatively obscure work by a little-known writer was intended as the precursor of a longer biography which did not materialise. Rabener regarded Peter the Great as ‘one of the most curious people who ever lived’ (p. [1] of preface) and wrote conscientiously: ‘This writing […] has been compiled from credible and fairly accessible sources, whereby I left nothing unread and unexamined that can serve for a clear and orderly concept of the tsar’s life except for a few rare books and small historical writings which I could not procure’ (p. [1]-[2] of preface).
The Northern Worthies, or, The Lives of Peter the Great, Father of his Country and Emperor of all Russia, and of his Illustrious Consort, Catherine, the Late Czarina
M. de Fontenelle
London: E. Mory and J. Stone, 1728
[M.S. Anderson] 1728 – Fontenelle
The outline of Peter the Great’s achievements by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757) is one of many obituaries that Fontenelle wrote as secretary of the Académie des Sciences. It was delivered on 14 November 1725 and published in French in 1727. Most of Fontenelle’s obituaries were of scientists. In his first paragraph he justifies the unprecedented act of the Academy eulogising a sovereign: ‘we look upon the late CZAR but as an Academician, tho’ he was a King and Emperor of Academicks; He has established Arts and Sciences, in the vast Extent of his Dominions’. Fontenelle describes Russia before Peter’s time as ‘so grosly [sic] ignorant, that it was almost equal to the Infancy of Nations’. An appendix on ‘the present State of Russia’ (p. 73-94) links history with travel writing.
Histoire de l'empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand
Voltaire
Leipzig: F. Lankisch et Heretiers, 1761
[M.S. Anderson] 1761 – Voltaire
According to William Coxe (see ‘Travel’), writing in 1784, ‘Voltaire’s Life of Peter the Great […] is the work from which most foreign nations have formed their idea of Russia; which many French and English authors have servilely copied until it is considered as a standard book, to which we may refer as to the most unquestionable authority’. Not only did Voltaire’s history of Peter the Great help to fix the accepted image of Peter, but it was extremely popular. Nine English editions were published between approximately 1760 and 1778 (several in a duodecimo format which indicated cheapness for wide circulation), in addition to numerous French-language editions, published in various countries, and a German translation. Voltaire was well aware of numerous other works on Peter the Great, which he viewed as ‘insipid panegyrics’ and ‘defamatory libels’, commissioned by booksellers and penned by hacks (p. v). His own approach was to use primary sources and to concentrate on Peter’s public life, as his private life could be attested only by means of anecdotes. Voltaire emphasised the importance of truth.
Songs, Chorusses, &c. &c. in Peter the Great, or, The Wooden Walls
Andrew Cherry
London: Barker and Son, 1807
[M.S. Anderson] 1807 – Cherry
M.S. Anderson wrote in a book review: ‘Peter [the Great] appears surprisingly seldom in plays by British Authors; and those in which he is a character were by minor writers […] and with plots which rode roughshod over the facts of history’. This is a typical example. Andrew Cherry (1762-1812) was an Irish actor and minor playwright whose plays enjoyed mixed success. In his Peter the Great, Peter (who did indeed learn about shipbuilding, partly in London, in connection with developing a Russian navy) is an artisan working in ‘a sea port in the Russian dominions’, possibly Archangel.
Peter de Groote: Keizer van Rusland in Holland en te Zaandam, in 1697 en 1717
Jacobus Scheltema
Amsterdam: H. Gartman, 1814
[M.S. Anderson] 1814 – Scheltema
This is one of two Dutch works about Peter the Great in the M.S. Anderson Collection. Jacob Scheltema (1767-1835) was a Dutch historian, archeologist, and lawyer, whose academic interests included relations between the Netherlands and Russia.
Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia: a Study of Historical Biography
Eugene Schuyler
New York: C. Scribner's sons, 1884
[M.S. Anderson] 1884 – Schuyler
The American Eugene Schuyler (1840-1890) had multiple contacts with Russia and Russian: he was the Russian consul in Moscow (1867-9) and Tallinn (1869), secretary of the American legation in St Petersburg (1869-76), travelled extensively in Russia, and translated Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons and Tolstoi’s The Cossacks. His two-volume biography of Peter the Great is founded on the ‘study of original documents in the archives of various countries, of the Russian collections of laws and state papers, of the memoirs and accounts of Peter’s contemporaries, of the works of Russian historians, and of most of the important books written on the subject by foreigners’ (p. [v]). It has survived well enough to be reprinted in 1967, and M. S. Anderson recommended it in his monograph Peter the Great.
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CATHERINE THE GREAT
Catherine the Great (1729-1796) became Empress of Russia following the dethronement and murder of her husband, Peter III, in 1762, and made Russia one of the great economic and military powers of Europe. Under her, the Russian Empire expanded by 200,000 square miles to absorb among other areas the Crimea, the Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Catherine pioneered for Russia a role as a mediator in European disputes and tied Russian interests inextricably with western European ones. She was a patron of the arts, literature and education, cultivating major French Enlightenment thinkers (most notably, Voltaire) and importing German mathematicians and scientists to work under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Administratively, she reformed local government, increasing the number of provinces and of government officials and decentralizing several important powers.
Catherine wanted to be seen as an enlightened sovereign and to a large extent succeeded. Early on she was seen in western Europe as the heir to the policies and aspirations of Peter the Great, a politically progressive monarch civilising an immense semi-barbaric nation. Contemporary historians widely admired her, especially in France, although some criticised her personal morals, the way she gained power, and the corruption of some of her officials. They disregarded her extension of serfdom.
Catherine excited extensive literature by writers of her own day and of succeeding generations although, to use M.S. Anderson’s phrase, ‘the proportion of gold to dross is low’ between anecdotal, gossipy and sometimes scandalous accounts and serious studies of important aspects of her reign which relegated her to the background. The M. S. Anderson Collection contains nine titles by Catherine II, printed between 1772 and 1859, and some fifty titles about her. These range from biographies and histories of her reign to a eulogistic poem, imaginary conversations between her, Peter the Great, Louis XVI of France and Frederick II of Prussia, and a novel of 1899, The Turkish Automaton.
Epitre a Catherine II, imperatrice de toutes les Russies
Claude Joseph Dorat
Paris: S. Jorry, 1765
[M.S. Anderson] 1765 – Dorat
This work praises Catherine the Great for supporting the French encylopaedist Denis Diderot (1713-1784) by purchasing his library. Catherine’s cultivation of Diderot, alongside that of Voltaire and d’Alembert, was part of her patronage of the arts and desire to be recognised internationally as an enlightened sovereign. This publication consists of a letter to Catherine followed by a nine-page poem. The writer, Claude Joseph Dorat (1734-1780), was a prolific one who excelled in light verse but is otherwise considered mediocre.
Instructio Sacrae Imperatoriae Maiestatis Aecaterinae Secundae … Coetui Auspiciis illius Convocato ad Conficiendam Ideam Novi Legum Codicis
Catherine II
St Petersburg: Academy of Sciences, 1770
[M.S. Anderson] 1770 – Catherine
Catherine the Great’s instructions to the commission intended to give Russia a new enlightened code of laws (which ultimately failed to materialise) derives from Montesquieu's De l'Esprit des loix and Beccaria's Traité des délits et des peines among other works. Catherine’s Instruction was largely written in French and translated into Russian. It first appeared in 1767. The M. S. Anderson Collection contains five editions printed between 1768 and 1778: one each in German, Dutch, French, English and this one, printed in Russian, Latin, German and French in parallel columns.
Anekdoter om Statsforandringen i Rusland i 1762
Claude Carloman de Rulhière
Copenhagen: J.M. Stadthagen, 1797
[M.S. Anderson] 1797 – Rulhière
As secretary of the French envoy to Russia, Claude Carloman de Rulhière (1734-1791) was an eye-witness of the dethronement and death of Tsar Peter III in St Petersburg and the assumption of absolute power by his widow, Catherine the Great, in 1762. He wrote his account of events at the desire of the Countess of Egmont, the daughter of Marshal de Richelieu. His manuscript ‘acquired some reputation’, in the words of the preface, shortly after his return to Paris. It is not complimentary to Catherine – ‘I saw that princess, who had escaped as a fugitive from the Palace on the same day, force her husband to resign at once his empire and his life’ – and Catherine made repeated efforts to secure it. Consequently, the work was not published until after her (and Rulhière’s) death. The M. S. Anderson Collection has four editions from 1797, one each in French, German, English and Danish.
Vita, e Fasti di Caterina II, Imperatrice ed Autocratice di Tutte le Russie ec. ec.
Lugano: s.n., 1797
[M.S. Anderson] 1797 – Vita
This anonymous six-volume Italian biography of Catherine the Great, described as accurate but badly organized (B. von Bilbassoff) is the first European work on such extensive lines. It is a compilation from other sources. The first volume and a half are about Peter the Great, the remainder about Catherine. The author regards Catherine extremely positively, as an ornament to the throne.
Leben Catharina II, Kaiserin und Selbstherrscherin aller Reussen etc. etc.
Georg Freiherr von Tannenberg
Leipzig: G. von Tannenberg, 1797
[M.S. Anderson] 1797 – Tannenberg
Georg von Tannenberg spent many happy years in military service in Russia. He describes Catherine the Great in superlative terms, regarding her as occupying the first place among the great people of the world and stating that her life and brilliant reign deserve the admiration of posterity. He writes his biography as a corrective to others that have appeared since her death, which he feels have been untruthful and unfair to her.
Histoire de Catherine II, impératrice de Russie
Jean-Henri Castéra
Paris: F. Buisson, 1799
[M.S. Anderson] 1799 – Castéra
Primarily a translator rather than a writer, Jean-Henri Castéra (1749-1838) lived in Poland and visited Russia as an agent in the French diplomatic service. He began his history of Catherine II during her lifetime, rushed the first edition, Vie de Catherine II (1797), through shortly after her death, and, with the help of reports of French and Russian envoys in the archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Paris, then revised and enlarged it for publication as Histoire de Catherine II. The work was immediately translated into English, French, Dutch and Danish, and for the next century remained the basis for views of Catherine the Great in western Europe.
Memoirs of the Princess Daschkaw, Lady of Honour to Catherine II. Empress of all the Russias
E. R. Dashkova
London:H. Colburn,, 1840
[M.S. Anderson] 1840 – Dashkova
The Princess Dashkova (1744-1810) was a faithful friend of Catherine the Great who was present at the events of 1762 and who was the Director of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She wrote her memoirs in French in 1806, four years before she died, at the request of Martha Wilmot, an English traveller to Russia. The princess wrote from memory, without the assistance of a diary or notes. Her memoirs, which include letters from Catherine, were first published in this English translation.
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THE NAPOLEONIC WARS
The Napoleonic Wars took place between approximately 1803 (immediately after the French Revolutionary Wars) and 1815, between Napoleon’s French Empire and changing sets of European allies. French forces routed the Russians ignominiously at the Battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805, and defeated them at Friedland on 14 June 1807, driving them out of Poland and forcing Tsar Alexander I to sign the Treaty of Tilsit on 7 July 1807. The tide turned when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812. He entered the country with over 400,000 men and came out with barely 20,000 survivors (numbers vary), conquered by skilful Russian raids and ambushes, illness, hunger, snowstorms and appalling physical conditions. The Russian campaign marked the turning point in Napoleon’s fate.
Britain remained against France throughout the period of the Napoleonic Wars. This rendered her pro-Russian, except for the period of the Anglo-Russian War, 1807-12. In the long term, the Russian defeat of Napoleon forced Britain to face Russia’s strength and power as never before, and Russia was seen as a political threat. In the short term, Britain reacted to the Russian victory of 1812 with delight and admiration. The Russian rout of Napoleon was the source for many poems, dramas and non-fiction narratives.
The M. S. Anderson Collection contains some 46 items specifically about the Napoleonic Wars published between 1806 and 1910: drama, poetry, a diary, personal narratives and more general histories, some of them by participants in the Wars. Over 40 per cent of these were written before 1816, during the Wars. Most are in English or French, but there is also a German background work on Russia and even some Dutch reminiscences.
Russia: a Heroic Poem
J. Hamilton Roche
London: J. Hamilton Roche, 1813
[M.S. Anderson] 1813 – Roche
The Napoleonic Wars inspired numerous outbursts of poetry, some written at the time, some much later. This is one of two such poems from 1813 in the M. S. Anderson Collection, and one of six such poems in the Collection overall. (John) Hamilton Roche was a poet from Sudbury, in Suffolk who served in the light infantry. His Russia follows poems about Salamanca and Waterloo among others. It is dedicated to Tsar Alexander of Russia and is fiercely pro-Russian and exultingly anti-French. It ends:
Then follow, Russians! Lead the glorious fight!
Your monarch calls! go, conquer in his right:
Your flag high waves! And gloriously unfurl’d,
With fam’d Britannia’s – saves a sinking world!
See, France is humbled! Europe’s joys are great!
And nations breathe! Deliver’d from their fate.
Kurze Geschichte und Geographie des Russischen Reichs
Georg Heinrich Kayser
Augsburg and Leipzig: [s.n.], 1812
[M.S. Anderson] 1812 – Kayser
This short, cheap work by a high school teacher in Augsburg is prompted by the Napoleonic Wars rather than dealing with them. Rather, it provides background on Russia in order to bring its readers up to date with current affairs: history, geography, politics, and a list of Russian towns, giving their location, size and salient features. It describes itself on the title page as intended as an explanation of maps showing the scene of war, and states its purpose in the preface as correcting false views and opinions occasioned by general ignorance about Russia.
Histoire de l'expédition de Russie
Georges Chambray
Paris: Pillet aîné:Anselin et Pochard, 1823
[M.S. Anderson] 1823 – Chambray
Georges Chambray, a general of French artillery, wrote this work as a Russian prisoner of the Napoleonic Wars. By then he had participated in the Battles of Boulogne, Ulm and Austerlitz before serving in Pomerania (1812) and Russia. Chambray describes the means taken to feed and move an enormous army in unsympathetic surroundings, and details causes for the fall of Napoleon, which he regards as more numerous than are generally thought. He says that he would have liked to describe the characters of leading generals, but felt that he was too close to events to be able to do so, except for Napoleon.
History of the Expedition to Russia Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon, in the Year 1812
Philippe-Paul de Ségur
2nd edn
London: Treuttel and Wurtz, Treuttel, jun. and Richter, 1825
[M.S. Anderson] 1825 – Ségur
The French general Count Philippe-Paul de Ségur (1780-1873) was general of brigade in the Russian campaign of 1812 and served with distinction in campaigns of 1813-14. He was Napoleon’s quartermaster, and hence in a position to describe Napoleon better and more completely than any other witness. His Histoire de Napoléon et de la grande armée pendant l'année 1812, first published in two volumes in Paris in 1824, was an immediate success, running through numerous editions in both French and English, and bringing about Ségur’s election to the Académie française. The English reader may well experience schadenfreude, Ségur having experienced the 1812 campaign as ‘that disastrous epoch of our public and private calamities’ (p. vi) and ‘that fatal war’ (p. vii). He writes: ‘As for me, I will avail myself of the privilege, sometimes painful, sometimes glorious, of telling what I have seen, and of retracing, perhaps with too scrupulous attention, its most minute details; feeling that nothing was too minute in that prodigious Genius and those gigantic feats, without which we should never have known the extent to which human strength, glory, and misfortune, may be carried.’ (p. viii).
Commentaries on the War in Russia and Germany in 1812 and 1813
Sir George Cathcart
London: J. Murray, 1850
[M.S. Anderson] 1850 – Cathcart
Sir George Cathcart (1794-1854) was an army officer who was present at all the main battles in 1813. Cathcart felt that the year 1813 had been comparatively ignored in descriptions of Napoleon’s decline. Unlike Ségur’s work, Cathcart’s history was never republished. His account, which focusses on the main strategic line of operations of the two grand armies, is offered as ‘the testimony of an eye-witness of much that he has recorded, and one who had peculiar opportunities of correct information respecting the rest.’ (p. ix).
THE CRIMEAN WAR
The Crimean War took place between 1854 and 1856 between Russia on the one hand and Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and, later, the Kingdom of Sardinia on the other. Its goal was to defend Turkish territory against Russia and safeguard Turkish independence; its immediate result was Russian defeat, although the Eastern Question concerning influence over the Ottoman Empire, of which the Crimean War was but a part in what was already a long-running contest, rumbled on until after the First World War. Major events of the Crimean War included the Battles of Alma, Balaclava and Inkerman and the Sieges of Sevastopol and Kars.
While anti-Russian feeling was lukewarm in France, in Britain it was virulent. The Crimean War was the first major European war to take place in the era of book mechanisation and cheap print. It excited numerous publications: personal reminiscences by military and medical personnel and others of both sexes and various nationalities, diaries, letters, pamphlets, parliamentary papers, histories of Russia generally and the War specifically, maps and fiction. Heightened awareness of Russia furthermore prompted the publication of general books about it. Interest began and was greatest during the War. The publication of memoirs continued, albeit at a markedly reduced level, beyond the end of the nineteenth century. The M. S. Anderson Collection contains 161 items specifically about the Crimean War or episodes of it, predominantly published in the English language before 1861. Authors vary from the well-known (e.g. Sir Austen Henry Layard; Sir Henry Atwell Lake; Sir Howard Douglas) to the obscure.
Sketch of the Battle of the Alma on Septr 20th 1854
M. A. Biddulph
[London]: E. Stanford, [1854]
[M.S. Anderson] 1854 – Pamphlets
The Battle of Alma, fought along the Alma River on 20 September 1854, was the first major engagement of the Crimean War. An Anglo-French force defeated the Russian army. Maps, both as book illustrations and as independent publications, were popular. Michael Anthony Shrapnel Biddulph (1823-1904), who drew this one, was sent to the Crimea as an adjutant to the Royal Artillery. He participated in the Battles of the Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman and Chernaya, and in the siege of Sevastopol, and was awarded several honours for his service in the War.
The Future Historian's View of the Present War
Nicholas Patrick Wiseman
London: Routledge, 1855
[M.S. Anderson] 1855 – Pamphlets
This is one of numerous contemporary pamphlets concerning the Crimean War in the M.S. Anderson Collection. It is an address by Cardinal Wiseman (1802-1865), the first Archbishop of Westminster. It is intensely patriotic, ending: ‘And so the historian […] will look back, and there he will see Alma, and Blakaklava, and Inkerman, like bright radiant gems in the crown of England, resplendent and steady, and never losing their light until, as by degrees they grow more and more remote, they cluster into one single constellation, and remain for ever fixed on the firmament of Britain’s glory’ (p. 24).
The Story of the Campaign of Sebastopol
Sir Edward Bruce Hamley
Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1855
[M.S. Anderson] 1855 – Hamley
The Siege of Sevastopol lasted from October 1854 until September 1855, when Russian capitulation led to peace negotiations. The author of this account was Sir Edward Bruce Hamley (1824-1893), who was probably the most renowned British military writer of the nineteenth century, and among the most influential (ODNB). He served throughout the Crimean War and won various awards for his service. His portrayal of the siege was originally published as a series of letters in Blackwood’s Magazine, and Hamley repeated his views in War in the Crimea (1890; also in the M.S. Anderson Collection). Hamley wrote his narrative in camp in the intervals of military duty. He felt equipped to write from having been a spectator as well as actor in all the action of the campaign, and through having had access to information at headquarters. He describes his work as ‘a round unvarnished tale’ and says of his purpose: ‘My object has been to hang historical events and memorable scenes on a thread of personal narrative, which should at once connect and relieve them, endeavouring at the same time to render operations purely military intelligible to the general reader.’ (p. vii).
The Lives of our Heroes of the Crimea
George Ryan
London: J. Field, 1855
[M.S. Anderson] 1855 – Ryan
This work consists of biographies of 57 men engaged in the Crimean War. Most of the biographies comprise between two and six pages, although those for prominent nobles, Lord Raglan, General Sir De Lacy Evans, the Earl of Lucan and the Earl of Cardigan, are much longer.
The French Pastor at the Seat of War
Émilien Frossard
London: Nisbet, 1856
[M.S. Anderson] 1856 – Frossard
Émilien Frossard (1802-1881) was a French Protestant pastor who served as an army chaplain in the Crimea before Sevastopol. This translation was published in the same year as the French original, Lettres écrites d'Orient. Letters to the writer’s family appear in the form of diary entries, with some explanatory narrative passages.
The Englishwoman in Russia: Impressions of the Society and Manners of the Russians at Home
London: J. Murray, 1855
[M.S. Anderson] 1855 – Englishwoman
Although this description of Russian lifestyle and customs by an anonymous Englishwoman who lived in Russia for ten years in itself has nothing to do with the Crimean War, it owes its existence to interest in the Crimea excited by the war. The anonymous authoress wrote it to promote understanding of the Russians at a time when Russophobia was strong. The writer notes of the Russians that they are ‘a people whose domestic habits are comparatively but little known to the English nation’ (p. vi). She is ambivalent towards them: ‘I trust that I have done full justice to all the amiable and social excellences of the Russians. Of their other qualities I beg the reader to form his own judgment. “Une nation de barbares polis,” said a French gentleman, in speaking of them; but one cannot deny that they possess the good qualities of savages, as well as their bad ones.’ (p. vi). Robert Browning drew on this work for his poem Ivan Ivanovitch (1879).
Pictorial History of the Russian War 1854-5-6
George Dodd
Edinburgh: Chambers, 1856
[M.S. Anderson] 1856 – Dodd
This book by the journeyman writer George Dodd (1808-1881) demonstrates the immense popular interest in the Crimean War, its cheap paper and double columns indicating that it was written for the masses. There are nine double-page colour maps, a coloured frontispiece, and ninety black-and-white illustrations, plus initial letters and tailpieces. In his preface, the author notes: ‘The Russian War of 1853-6 differed from all preceding wars in this among other characteristics – that it admitted, to a very remarkable degree, of historical narration during the events themselves’ (p. [v]). He lists texts enabling such narration as official documents, parliamentary reports, items in the periodical press, personal published memoirs and letters published in newspapers. Information was expedited by the postal service, electric telegraph, railway and steam-ship.
The History of the War against Russia, Illustrated, vol. 1
E.H. Nolan
London: Virtue, [1855?]
[M.S. Anderson] 1855 – Nolan
This is another piece of evidence for general interest in the Crimean War. The two-volume work was published in parts at one shilling and in divisions at six shillings, to spread the cost for the purchaser. Unlike Dodd’s history, here the illustrations are all full-page ones, bound in at the front of the volume. Nolan declares in the preface (p. 4): ‘Our great aim will be to avoid such dry detail as can give no instruction or entertainment to the great body of the people, and yet to afford such an insight to the intrigues of Russia, the cabals of the Divan, the policy of the Western Cabinets, the counsels of the military chiefs, and the operations of armies, as will increase the solid information of those who peruse our book, and at the same time furnish them with reading more pleasurable than can be supplied by the unreal stories of the novel or romance.’ Nolan emphasises the value of illustration to ‘impress upon our readers the beautiful or terrible realities our pen will describe’ and satisfy a desire to see the performers of great actions. He explains: ‘never before was the taste and talent of the artist brought into requisition so extensively for the instruction and pleasure of the general public, and never did the mass of readers patronize illustration as they do now.’ and: ‘Ours shall really be an Illustrated History of the War.’
Echoes of the War and Other Poems
Henry Sewell Stokes
London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855
[M.S. Anderson] 1855 – Stokes
The Crimean War excited numerous literary reactions in prose and verse. Echoes of the War and Other Poems is the work of an established poet, Henry Sewell Stokes (1808-1895). It contains twenty poems, some about specific battles (Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman, and the Siege of Sevastopol), others more general. All are intensely patriotic. The volume was warmly received upon publication.
Reminiscences of Scutari Hospitals in Winter 1854-55
Sarah Anne Terrot
Edinburgh: A. Stevenson, 1898
[M.S. Anderson] 1898 – Terrot
Sarah Terrot (b. 1820) was one of the nurses who accompanied Florence Nightingale to the Crimea in October 1854. Following severe illness, she was ordered home in spring 1855. In 1887 she was awarded the Royal Red Cross for her services in the Crimea. This is a presentation copy of her experiences. Terrot does not explain why she waited nearly 45 years to publish her memoirs. However, the late publication is a good indication of continuing interest in the Crimean War.
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FICTION
Allusions to Russia appear in English literature as early as the fourteenth century, the knight in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales having raided in Lithuania and in Russia -- ‘In Lettow hadde he reysed and in Ruce’ (General Prologue, l. 54). As Elizabethan travellers began to write about Russia, so, too, literary allusions increased. Shakespeare makes a dozen or so references to Russia, and Russian characters or settings appear in works by the seventeenth-century playwrights Thomas Heywood, George Wilkins, John Fletcher and John Crowne. Peter the Great inspired poetry and plays about Russia in the eighteenth century, beginning with Aaron Hill’s The Northern Star (1718). Starting with The Siberian Anecdotes (1783) – which, as noted by M. S. Anderson, shows no acquaintance with the realities of life in Siberia – some novels also appeared. Byron, Robert Southey, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne were major nineteenth-century poets who wrote about Russia.
A marked upsurge of interest in the nineteenth century reflected greater awareness of Russia, now a formidable economic and military power of which through the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars all were aware, combined with a flood of novels and of children’s literature generally and the development of cheap and popular print.
Prose fiction in the M. S. Anderson Collection begins with an example of a very specific genre, imaginary conversations between Catherine the Great and other monarchs, L'Ombre de Catherine II aux Champs Elysées (1797). The earliest novel in the M. S. Anderson Collection, and one of the earliest overall, is the extremely successful children’s book Elizabeth, or, The exiles of Siberia, by Madame Cottin (1806; translated into English 1809). Most novels in the collection date from the 1850s onwards. In form, they range from three-deckers, published at the prohibitive price of thirty-one shillings and sixpence for the full work, to the yellowbacks commonly sold at railway stalls, penny chapbooks, and cheap, lurid novels with small print and woodcut illustrations. Some novels simply use Russia as an exotic backdrop for a religious or a love story. Others are about historical (or sometimes at the time contemporary) people and events, such as Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, the Crimean and the Russo-Japanese Wars and the First World War. When Britain and Russia faced a common military enemy, in the Napoleonic Wars and in World War One, Russia emerged positively in fiction. For most of the nineteenth century portrayals of Russia in fiction were largely negative, in accordance with popular British Russophobia.
Elizabeth, or, The Exiles of Siberia
Madame Cottin
London: S.A. Oddy, 1810
[M.S. Anderson] 1810 – Cottin
Elizabeth, or, The Exiles of Siberia
Madame Cottin
Glasgow: The booksellers, 1851
[M.S. Anderson] 1851 - Cottin
Élisabeth, ou, Les exilés de Sibérie, by Sophie Cottin (1770-1807) was first published in 1806 and translated into English in 1809. It tells the story of the daughter of a Polish patriot exiled to Siberia by the Tsar. Élisabeth makes the arduous journey from Siberia to St Petersburg to beg the Tsar to free her father, and gains her object. The story was frequently reprinted, both in French and English, and inspired a play by Frederick Reynolds, The Exile, or, The Deserts of Siberia (1808). The sub-title of Elisabeth is: ‘a tale, founded upon facts’, and the author emphasises in her preface that the incident is based on truth. The work was highly influential in moulding English ideas of Russia. This is the earliest work of prose fiction in the M. S. Anderson Collection, which has a French-language edition published in London and four English editions as well as the 24-page chapbook shown.
Franziska, or, The Feldheim Family
Sarah M. S. Clarke
Edinburgh: W. Oliphant, 1873
[M.S. Anderson] 1873 – Clarke
Franziska, or, The Feldheim Family is an evangelical tale set in Courland – whose inhabitants the author in her preface describes as subject to Russian rule, but not, properly speaking, Russian, as the province had been annexed little more than a century earlier. The evangelical aim is far more prominent than the Russian backdrop. This is one of two Russian stories published by Sarah M. S. Clarke, a little-known writer, in 1873; the other is The Countess Margarethe and her Children, or, Country Life in Russia.
Ralpho the Mysterious, or, The Young Swordsman of Warsaw
Alfred R. Phillips
London: J. Henderson, [1883?]
[M.S. Anderson] 1883 – Phillips
This is an example of popular penny fiction by an obscure writer whose only essay this appears to have been into a Russian theme. The work was popular enough for Phillips to have been defined by it – i.e. ‘by Alfred R. Phillips, author of “Ralpho”, “Kairon”, “Desdichado”, etc.’ – on his Zalva and Selim. The work is pro-Polish, anti-Russian, and ends with a Russian defeat at the hand of Poles. This is typical of nineteenth-century popular sentiment.
Ivan and Esther: a Tale of Jewish Life in Russia
Alice Lang
London: Religious Tract Society, [1892?]
[M.S. Anderson] 1892 – Lang
This is another tale by a little-known Christian writer, several of whose works were published by the Religious Tract Society. It is set near Astrakhan, in Southern Russia, and deals with a young Jewish Christian couple, Jewish-Christian relations and with persecution of the Jews, at a time when discrimination against Jews and expulsion of Jews was rife in Russia, and when Jaakoff Prelooker, who preached reconciliation between Jews and Christians, was lecturing and writing prolifically in Britain.
Condemned as a Nihilist: a Story of Escape from Siberia
G.A. Henty
London: Blackie, [1893]
[M.S. Anderson] 1893 – Henty
George Alfred Henty (1832-1902) was the most popular writer of adventure stories for boys in the late nineteenth century. Writing to a formula, he produced some eighty boys’ stories or collections of shorter pieces, as well as eleven less successful adult novels; most have a historical setting, and Henty came to be credited with being most English boys’ main source of historical knowledge. Condemned as a Nihilist is one of three with a Russian setting. Concerning the plot, Henty writes in the preface: ‘There are few difficulties that cannot be surmounted by patience, resolution, and pluck, and great as are the obstacles that nature and the Russian government oppose to an escape from the prisons of Siberia, such evasions have occasionally been successfully carried out’. The book contains a map of Russia and an account of Siberia and convict life there. Henty attributes his knowledge of this to books by Henry Lansdell (1841-1919), who visited all the principal prisons in Siberia; both of Lansdell’s relevant titles are in the M. S. Anderson Collection.
Kobo: a Story of the Russo-Japanese War
Herbert Strang
London: Blackie, 1905
[M.S. Anderson] 1905 – Strang
Herbert Strang is the pseudonym of two staff members of Oxford University Press, George Herbert Ely (1866-1958) and James L’Estrange (1867-1947), who wrote adventure stories and historical novels during the first thirty years of the twentieth century. Kobo is one of two juvenile novels about the Russo-Japanese War, which took place 1904-5 and, against all expectation, was won by the Japanese. Kobo exalts Japanese military heroism at the expense of the Russians.
With our Russian Allies
F.S. Brereton
London: Blackie, 1916
[M.S. Anderson] 1916 – Brereton
Captain Frederick Sadleir Brereton (1872-1957) was a regular officer in the British army who from 1900 onwards wrote boys’ adventure stories in war settings, in the manner of G. A. Henty. This is the third of three books with a Russian setting, the others dealing with the Crimean and the Russo-Japanese Wars. A typically anti-German work, it tells the story of an English boy, Hugh Hurcombe, who in 1914 is travelling to Warsaw as war erupts, finds his young cousins serving with the Cossacks, and is given a commission in the Russian army.
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