Saltykov was the leading satirist in 19th-century Russia. This, his only novel, in a new translation specially commissioned for the World's Classics, is a savage indictment of the family and the land-owning classes in Russia. Theodore Dreiser wrote of the novel, "it interpreted a Russian family and its environment so vividly as to convince me that its author belonged with the greatest writers of his nation, and more, the world."