"Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts" brings together twenty essays by Marcus C. Levitt, a leading American scholar of eighteenth-century Russia. The essays concern a spectrum of works and issues that shaped the development of modern Russian literature. The first part of the collection concerns the career and works of Alexander Sumarokov, and includes essays on the problems of authorial status, literary critical discourse, Sumarokov's reading, his philosophical writing; his views on orthography, as well as studies of eighteenth-century Russian ballet and obscene verse. In the essays of the second part Levitt argues that the Enlightenment's privileging of vision played an especially important role in eighteenth-century Russian culture, and that this "occularcentrism" was profoundly shaped by indigenous religious views.