"Sologub" is a pseudonym-the author's real name is Feodor Kuzmich Teternikov. He was born in 1863. He completed a scholastic course at Petrograd. His first published story appeared in the periodical "Severny Viestnik" in 1894, but it was not until about a dozen years later that he came into his fame, which he has since then further enhanced. This is all the biographical knowledge we have of a living novelist whose place in Russian literature is secure beyond all question; the scantiness of our knowledge is all the more amazing when we consider that the author is over fifty, and that his complete works are in their twentieth volume. These include almost every possible form of literary expression-the fairy tale, the poem, the play, the essay, the novel, and the short story. Sologub's place as a poet is hardly less assured than his place as a novelist.