The book is devoted to a study of little-known documentary evidence of relations between the nobility and the higher authorities of the Russian Empire in the late 18th - early 19th centuries on the example of letters by Pyotr Ivanovich Chelischev, a representative of a famous and glorious family. P.I. Chelischev (1745-1811) was a writer, traveler, ethnographer, was on military service and had the rank of Second Major. He is the author of "Traveling in the North of Russia in 1791", was a friend and associate of Alexander Radishchev, and many historians consider him a co-author of "Traveling from St. Petersburg to Moscow". This book is the result of the author's work in archives and museum collections, as a result of which he found, translated and put into scientific circulation three new historical documents - letters of nobleman P.I. Chelishchev to Emperor Alexander I. The letters are an appeal of a nobleman to the emperor to intervene in the litigation over the estate, which had been taken from him for the debts. The analysis of these letters revealed some peculiarities of business writing and etiquette in 18th-century Russia and peculiarities of legal and property relations in the Russian Empire in the late 18th - early 19th centuries.