The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories

Ivan Bunin (1870-1953) was a Russian author. His poems, novels, and short stories are recognized for their continuation of the realist tradition in Russian literature as well as for their stylistic intricacy. Born in Voronezh to a family of wealthy landowners, Bunin was encouraged in his intellectual and literary interests from a young age. By the late 1870s, however, his father¿s gambling addiction plunged the family into poverty. Unable to afford private tutors, Bunin was forced to attend public school for several years before failing to complete his courses. He moved to Kharkov for work in 1889 and published his first collection of poetry in 1891, after which he began publishing essays, articles, short stories, and poems regularly in Saint Petersburg periodicals. In 1894, he travelled across Ukraine before returning to Russia and visiting Moscow for the first time, where he met Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, among others, and began to move in some of Russiäs most prestigious intellectual and literary circles. He published extensively throughout his lifetime, was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1903 and 1909, and became the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933.