Alexander Ertel
ALEXANDER ERTEL was the son of a captured Napoleonic soldier, born near Voronezh in Russia in 1855. Unable to gain a standard education, he instead educated himself. Whilst he was imprisoned and then exiled for revolutionary activities, he began writing. His first collection of stories, entitled Notes from the Steppes, was published in 1883, and he followed this with many other shorter works, including A Greedy Peasant in 1886. He also published two epic novels, the first of which, The Gardenins (1889), was greatly admired by Tolstoy. He died in 1908, at the age of 52.
