Alexander Pushkin
Russian poet, playwright, and novelist (1799–1837)
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (6 June [O.S. 26 May] 1799 – 10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1837) was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era. He is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet, as well as the founder of modern Russian literature.
Pushkin was born into the Russian nobility in Moscow. His father, Sergey Lvovich Pushkin, belonged to an old noble family. One of his maternal great-grandfathers was Abram Petrovich Gannibal, a nobleman and military general of African origin who was kidnapped from his homeland by the Ottomans, then freed by Peter the Great and raised in the Emperor's court household as his godson.
Pushkin published his first poem at the age of 15, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Upon graduation from the Lyceum, Pushkin recited his controversial poem "Ode to Liberty", one of several that led to his exile by Emperor Alexander I. While under strict surveillance by the Emperor's political police and unable to publish, Pushkin wrote his most famous play, Boris Godunov. His grand opus novel in verse Eugene Onegin was serialized between 1825 and 1832. Pushkin was fatally wounded in a duel with his wife's alleged lover (her sister's husband), Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès, also known as Dantes-Gekkern, a French officer serving with the Russian Chevalier Guard Regiment.
Ancestry
Pushkin's father, Sergei Lvovich Pushkin (1767–1848), was descended from a distinguished family of the Russian nobility that traced its ancestry back to the 12th century.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alexander Pushkin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.