Little Russia

With Gógol begins a new period of Russian literature. which is called by Russian literary critics “the Gógol period,” which lasts to the present date. Gógol was not a Great Russian. He was born in 1809, in a Little Russian or Ukraïnian nobleman’s family. His father had already displayed some literary talent and wrote a few comedies in Little Russian, but Gógol lost him at an early age. The boy was educated in a small provincial town, which he left, however, while still young, and when he was only nineteen he was already at St. Petersburg. At that time the dream of his life was to become an actor, but the manager of the St. Petersburg Imperial theatres did not accept him, and Gógol had to look for another sphere of activity. The Civil Service, in which he obtained the position of a subordinate clerk, was evidently insufficient to interest him, and he soon entered upon his literary career.