Ivan Turgenev was born in Russia in 1818 to a wealthy family of the landed gentry. His first claim to fame was his collection of stories A Sportsman's Notebook (1852), a book often compared to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin for its realistic portrayal of the difficult life faced by peasants under Russia's system of serfdom. Supposedly responsible for inspiring Czar Alexander II to free serfs, the book established Turgenev as a supporter of social reform.

A later work Fathers and Sons (1862) criticised the establishment's reluctance to accept social reform and created an uproar, leading to Turgenev's departure from Russia for Germany, England and eventually Paris where he was closely associated with the writer Gustav Flaubert and where he died in 1883. He continued to write all his life and was the first Russian writer to be widely read in the west.

• http://webserver.rcds.rye.ny.us/id/Literature/TurgenevMM.html
• http://www.williams.edu/acad-depts/Russian/courses/RUSS203/author/turgenev-sitemap/turgenev.html
• http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/turgenev.htm