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Cover image for Dead Souls

Dead Souls

by Nikolai Gogol
D. J. Hogarth
ebook
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Originally published in 1842. Translated from the Russian in 1916. From the intro, "It was the day of serfdom in Russia, and a man’s standing was often judged by the numbers of “souls” he possessed. There was a periodical census of serfs...an owner had to pay a tax on every “soul” registered at the last census, though some of the serfs might have died in the meantime...an owner might borrow money from a bank on the “dead souls” no less than on the living ones. The plan of Chichikov, Gogol’s hero-villain, was therefore to make a journey through Russia and buy up the “dead souls,” at reduced rates of course, saving their owners the government tax, and acquiring for himself a list of fictitious serfs, which he meant to mortgage to a bank for a considerable sum..." Cover image "Chichikov visiting Manilov" by Vasily Mikhailovich Salabanov found at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chichikov_visiting_Manilov_(Salabanov).jpg Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • Open EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1080
  • Text Difficulty:7-9