Death of Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol died on 21 February 1852 in Moscow, aged 42. A Russian writer of Ukrainian origin, Gogol was born in the Poltava region of Ukraine and moved to St Petersburg as a young man. He first drew attention with folklore-inspired stories in Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, then wrote the satirical play The Government Inspector and short stories such as The Nose and The Overcoat. His novel Dead Souls, published in 1842, tells of a swindler who travels the Russian provinces buying the names of dead serfs, and is regarded as a masterpiece of satire. Later in life he suffered a religious crisis, and shortly before his death he burned the manuscript of the second part of Dead Souls. He strongly influenced later Russian writers.

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