Description: An exploration of the various ways creative literature informed and shaped historical enquiry in late Imperial Russia
Brief description: Frances Nethercott is Reader in Modern European History at the University of St. Andrews, UK. She is the author of Russia's Plato: Plato and the Platonic Tradition in Russian Education, Science and Ideology, 1840-1930 (2000) and Russian Legal Culture Before and After Communism (2007). She also serves on the editorial board of Studies in East European Thoughtand Intellectual History Review.
Review Quotes:
"The author of this exhaustively argued and heavily documented monograph ... sets out to illustrate the 'literary interface' ... of Russian historical scholarship in nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia, a task at which she succeeds admirably." --Slavic Review
"Presents rich accounts of episodes and aspects of the careers of significant historians, and is instructive with regard to many topics in Russian imperial educational, as well as intellectual and cultural history. ... an essential resource for anyone interested in Russian imperial historiography or the interface of the literary and historical imaginations in nineteenth-century Russia." --The Russian Review "Nethercott's book shows the various ways in which history and literature have interacted, as seen from the point of view of history and professional historians." --Ab Imperio Quarterly "Escaping the straitjacket of conventional historiography, Writing History in Late Imperial Russia makes a subtle and original contribution to Russian intellectual history by exploring the relationship between history and literature in the work of three crucial generations of historians." --Simon Dixon, Sir Bernard Pares Professor of Russian History, University College London, UK "By carefully examining the writings of the most prominent Russian historians of this period, Frances Nethercott skillfully reveals the literary impulse in Russian historical scholarship and penetrates into the inner workings of the historian's craft. In so doing, this fascinating book makes an important contribution to the field of Russian cultural studies." --Vera Kaplan, The Cummings Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel